In an e-commerce environment, the third party logistics (3PL) takes charge of the logistics design, delivery, storage and transportation in a supply chain with its professional and complete value-added services. Beginning with an analysis of the relationships between the 3PL and supply chain members, the authors suggest that only when the 3PL reengineers its logistics business process to accomm...

Logistics Service Providers (3PL) have become important players in supply chain management. In a highly competitive context characterized by “time compression”, a successful strategy depends increasingly on the performance of Logistics Service Providers as they play a key integrative role linking different supply chain elements more effectively. However, the role of the information technology c...

In this work we present a collaborative model for logistics process management addressing the problem of the integration of activities of a 3 party logistics (3PL) operator. The scope of a 3PL operator is to achieve a balance between the warehouse and transportation costs and customer service level. In our model we define a collaborative network in which the 3PL operator interacts with subcontr...

This chapter reports the findings of a questionnaire survey on the adoption and utilization of information and communication technology (ICT) – an important tool to enhance efficiency and responsiveness in modern-day supply chains – in the Chinese third-party logistics (3PL) industry. As a global manufacturing base, China has a burgeoning 3PL industry serving a large number of domestic firms as...

Supplier selection is a critical activity for organizations, because it directly affects their performance and affects the productivity and competitiveness of the firm. It has been widely accepted in academic literature that this problem has a clear strategic nature multi definition. Third Party Logistics Providers (3PL) have been widely promoted by the phenomenon of outsourcing, on which compa...

We consider a supply chain in which a producer supplies a fresh product, through a third-party logistics (3PL) provider, to a distant market where a distributor purchases and sells it to end customers. The product is perishable, both the quantity and quality of which may deteriorate during the process of transportation. The market demand is random, sensitive to the selling price as well as the ...

parties involved, directly or indirectly, in fulfilling a customer request. Suppliers, customers, and other third-party providers share information and plans in order to maximize the efficiency and competitiveness of the overall supply chain (Ellram and Cooper, 1990). Each organization has a distinctive role to play and seamless transactions and value addition by each partner decides the overal...

In this paper, a case study conducted on a small third-party logistics (3PL) company in Hong Kong is presented. This company is interesting in that it has been designated as the “king” of Hong Kong’s 3PL (in-bound) logistics companies. The company has been successful in its overall business performance and in satisfying customers. This company’s strategic alliances with both clients and custome...

Third party Logistics is a new type of industry where the firm‘s logistics activities can be outsourced. The concept of Third party logistics has been developed from the need to extend transportation services by transportation companies to its customers. Many manufacturing industries turned to logistics outsourcing to restructure their distribution networks and gain competitive advantages. This...

In this paper, we investigated a third-party logistics (3PL) provider evaluation problem considering social sustainability as one of the important evaluation criteria. Since the 3PL service is mainly dependent on both transport vehicles and employees, managing them from the viewpoint of social sustainability has become a critical issue. Thus, 3PL providers need to be concerned about not only th...