اعمال نفوذ در انعطاف پذیری زنجیره تأمین تدارکات شخص ثالث - رویکرد سیستم ترکیبی مبتنی بر دانش

Nowadays, intensified globalization and consequent competitive pressures have reemphasized the importance of third party logistics (3PL) in managing logistics processes as well as customer and supplier relationships within the supply chain management (SCM). However, 3PL providers and their upstream and downstream parties within the whole chain have usually interacted as disconnected entities in the logistics performance management process. Despite the increased interest in using and improving logistics information systems, the number of researchers investigating the design and implementation of this process in close detail is still very small. This paper proposes an intelligent performance measurement system (K-LPMS) for measuring the performance of 3PL providers and their upstream and downstream supply chain partners. With the help of K-LPMS, 3PL providers are capable to fulfil different customer’s supply chain service requirement through accessing the capability of each SC partners and reconfigure SC network. This paper describes the structure of K-LPMS and its features. The results of testing and applying the tool in companies are presented. This paper concludes by discussing the implications of this research for managers, and identifying directions for future research.

With the globalization of businesses and the consequent competitive pressures, there has been an increasing dependence on the ability of companies to deliver customer-adapted products, all over the world, quickly and on time (Sohail & Sohal, 2003). The pressures for quick response and customer orientation have driven many companies to concentrate their energies on core competences that are critical to survival. Instead of being stuck in the high cost and unsatisfactory result of managing logistics operation by themselves, many companies choose to outsource some or all of their logistics activities to specialist firms. Therefore, a third party logistics (3PL) business is emerging and developing rapidly to fulfil the demands for advanced logistics services, in such fields as, transportation, warehousing, freight consolidation and distribution, product marking, labeling and packaging, inventory management, cross docking, product returns, order management, and logistics information systems (Rabinovich, Windle, Dresner, & Corsi, 1999). Many executives in the leading companies believe that the key advantage of an efficient supply chain (SC) is that competitiveness and profitability can increase, if internal key activities and business process are linked and managed across multiple firms (Serve, Yen, Wang, & Lin, 2002). Such an objective can only be achieved by an independent organization which interacts with all the partners in the whole chain. In the current environment of dynamic, changing customer preferences, and disruptive technological shifts, the network of SC is frequently restructured to respond such environmental changes. Thus, SC is a dynamic network that is being reconfigured continuously in terms of integrating new partners and re-organizing the networking of current operations in order to achieve the creation of value. In this current SC operations environment, 3PL has taken on the major responsibility of supporting the flexibility of customers’ SC networks. 3PL does not solely concentrate on their own internal operations, but closely cooperates with their customer’s SC partners such as manufacturers, suppliers and subcontracted logistics service providers (LSP), within the chain. Nevertheless, the frequent reconfiguration of customer’s SC network has created a new challenge for 3PL in the context of performance management. During the reconfiguration of the SC network, 3PL needs to change or redesign existing logistics operations modes including the selection of new sub-contracted LSPs. Hence, a new set of performance measures to suit the new SC network scenario and for selecting appropriate sub-contracted LSPs is needed. On the other hand, due to indirect contact with suppliers, customers increasingly rely on 3PL to manage the whole logistics flow and the performance of multiple suppliers since their performance is directly affecting the efficiency of the SC. This illustrates the importance of performance measurement (PM) for 3PL and shows its impact on SC flexibility. This impact comes about because 3PL relies on performance measuring information to allocate resources and to manage the SC partners within the chain. Usually, decisions regarding this are made by senior logistics mangers relying on their experience, know-how and knowledge. Human decision making is based on personal preferences, choices and personal satisfaction and hence contains an element of bias. In order to improve the quality of decision making, this paper proposes a knowledge-based logistics performance measurement system (K-LPMS) to support logistics managers with the provision of the most satisfactory results during the selection of sub-contracted LSP and the formulation of performance indicators during the configuration of the SC network. The proposed K-LPMS is a hybrid integration of knowledge processing modules: case-based reasoning (CBR) for retrieving past cases where performance indicators have been set; and a mathematical algorithm for calculating the capability value of sub-contracted LSPs and customers’ suppliers. This capability value is information for 3PLs which is useful for reconfiguring the SC operations. The salient features of the system are its ability to: (a) enable logistics managers to visualise the complex measurement of relationships in the SC network; (b) allow logistics managers to measure and manage relationships between sub-contracted LSPs; (c) examine the impact of flexibility on values within the reconfigured SC network; and (d) allow information to be passed, assessed and quantified, so that knowledge gained from the measurement could be used to improve performance. In the following sections, literature on 3PL and PM approaches are reviewed. Then, the development of the knowledge-based system is explained. The results obtained from its application are then described. After that, the implications of this research to industrialists and academics are discussed.

In the current dynamic business environment, the structure and scope of the SC network frequently needs to be re-configured. As a strategic enterprise’s SC partner, 3PL plays an important role in managing the SC operations. Improving the internal logistics operations and optimizing external integration of enterprise processes are the two main tasks of 3PL during the reconfiguration of the SC network. SC flexibility (SCF) refers to the internal flexibility and flexibility of the connections for enabling enterprises to respond to change. Hence, SCF is the key capability that 3PL needs to develop. The performance measurement system (PMS) of an organization is the mechanism by which the organization’s resources are managed, controlled and improved. It is also a mechanism to reflect the flexibility level within the organization, as the availability of resources directly reflects the ease of the organization to respond to change. In the 3PL industry, an effective PMS should have a SC wide focus to coordinate and control intra and inter-organizational activities; time-based measures to reflect just-in-time performance; customized KPI to satisfy increasingly demanding customers, and strong IT support to achieve a systematic PM process with objective judgment. The above performance measures are the indexes with which 3PL assesses its operations thereby leveraging the SCF and focusing on internal resource flexibility and external flexibility of the partners in the SC. In this study, a knowledge-based logistics performance measurement system (K-LPMS) was designed for 3PL to support the decision making on SC PM design (evaluation of different SC partners’ logistics performance) and the selection of sub-contracted LSPs during the re-configuration of the enterprise’s SC network. The suggested K-LPMS has built on two paradigms: performance metrics and system architecture. The performance metrics are especially tailor-made for 3PL to measure performance in five SC issues: supply, inventory management, warehousing, and transportation and customer services. The suggested performance matrix, multi-tier system architecture, has greatly enhanced the performance management and visibility among 3PL, their subcontractors and customers’ suppliers. With the help of K-LPMS, challenging decision making problems in SC performance management have been identified and solved through the provision of knowledge based advice. Furthermore, the information of sub-contracted LSP’s capability is also defined for 3PL in proposing various feasible solutions for different scenarios of SC network configuration. More importantly, the K-LPMS significantly improved the SCF of 3PL. For example, the internal resource flexibility is further enhanced as 3PL can record the capability value of each sub-contracted LSP to balance the trade off of resource utilization and SC service requirements. On the other hand, the external flexibility for 3PL and its customers is leveraged as they can acquire accurate information about the performance of their sub-contractors in order to support the strategic planning of SC configuration. The proposed system was adopted in a local HK freight forwarding company, LTC. The system evaluation results show that the adoption of K-LPMS has contributed to a significant improvement of business performance in terms of cost minimization, customer satisfaction and supplier relationships. In other words, the challenging work of SC configuration on 3PL, which is effectively collaborating with subcontractors and customer’s suppliers to deliver superior logistics service and maintaining the loyalty of customers coming from different fields, has been achieved through the K-LPMS.