Evaluating key factors influencing the development of multi-country consolidation for ocean freight forwarders in Taiwan

Abstract

The development of multi-country consolidation services has become a major feasible direction for major ocean freight forwarding firms in Taiwan. However, ocean freight forwarding firms must ponder which factors are most important when considering with the development of multi-country consolidation services. Therefore, the main purpose of this article was to apply the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method to evaluate the key factors influencing the development of multi-country consolidation services for ocean freight forwarding firms in Taiwan. Based on the literature and experts' opinions, a hierarchical structure with 4 assessment aspects and 16 assessment factors was first constructed, and the steps of fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method then proposed. Finally, based on the analytic hierarchy process experts' questionnaires, we used the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method to evaluate the key factors. The results showed that (1) ''cost'' is the most important aspect influencing the development of multi-country consolidation services for ocean freight forwarding firms in Taiwan; (2) in order of relative importance, the top eight key factors influencing the development of multi-country consolidation services for ocean freight forwarding firms in Taiwan are ''cargo accuracy and tracking management,'' ''consolidation cost,'' ''deregulation of operations,'' ''transport cost,'' ''integrated logistics information management,'' ''high frequency of ship sailings,'' ''logistics-related operating costs,'' and ''convenience of customs clearance,'' respectively. Furthermore, some discussions and recommendations concerning practical implications are provided for ocean freight forwarding firms operating in the multi-country consolidation market.

Using Fuzzy AHP Method to Evaluate Key Competency and Capabilities of Selecting Middle Managers for Global Shipping Logistics Service Providers

“…After that, Ding [13] applied the proposed method to evaluate a suitable partner of strategic alliance for a liner shipping company. In this paper, the fuzzy AHP procedure of Ding et al method [14] is used to evaluate relative weights. The steps are described below.…”

“…Pair-wise comparison of AHP questionnaire results has been employed to determine the experts' views of the relative importance of paired assessment criteria [10,12,14,17].…”

“…We have used the integrated triangular fuzzy numbers to construct fuzzy positive reciprocal matrices [14].…”

“…be the geometric mean of triangular fuzzy number [10,14,22] of the i th assessment aspect on the L+1 layer. The fuzzy weight of the i th assessment aspect can then be expressed as…”

“…Therefore, it is difficult to express the importance of key competency and key capabilities with accurate numerical values. This study uses the fuzzy set theory [11] with the cooperation of the AHP method to construct the fuzzy AHP evaluation model [12][13][14] and then employs it as the main mode for GSLSP to evaluate the key competency and capabilities of middle managers. In light of this, the main purpose of this paper is to use the fuzzy AHP method to empirically study the key competency and capabilities affecting the selection of middle managers for GSLSPs.…”