Abstract ：Risk management attracts more and more attention in modern logisticsenterprises, in particular, in mainland of China. In this paper, we analyze athird party logistics provider based on questionnaire and interviewing. First, weidentify the main risk sources in the third party logistics provider byinterviewing experienced employees. Then, we clarify the risk sources intothree levels and rank them by using analytic hierarchy process. Based on the theoreticalanalysis, we propose several practical strategies for the third party logisticsprovider, which is proved to be effective.
Key Words: third party logisticsprovider (3PLs),risk, analytic hierarchy process (AHP)
1.Introduction
Comparingwith the traditional goodstransportation, the modern logistics has covered a variety of servicesincluding transportation,warehousing, packing, allocation, loading and unloading, circulation andinformationprocessing, and so forth. Increasing risks are steadilyarising from such a prolongedlogistics chain such asaccidentsin transportation, breakage,damnification in loading and unloading, informationdistortion, and so forth. With the fast development around the world, 3PLs arefacing a significant increase in front-end investment and a corresponding riskin business development [1]. Risk issues and its management in 3PLs industry attractmore and more attention.
Motivatedby the rapid increase in logistics outsourcing in the world, Wang and Reganexamined some of these risks and discussed risk prevention measures, inparticular in the regions of Asia. Theirresearch focused on qualitative research [2]. Vasiliauskas andJakubauskas examined the benefits and the drawbacks of 3PLs conceptapplication, provided a detailed categorization of 3PLs services providers andbrought an overview of the 3PLs market in Europe [3]. Aguezzoul presented aliterature analysis on the criteria and the techniques used to select the 3PLs.A comparison of these methods in terms of advantages and disadvantages was presentedin this paper [4]. Cavinato explored, analyzed, and derived common themes onsupply risk assessment techniques. Hepresented the idea that every supply chain was madeup of five internal chain/network constructs, namely,physical,financial, informational, relational, and innovational. Furthermore,four categorizations of relevant product/supply costs werepresentedas four types of supply risks[5]. Demirkan and Cheng examined the supply chain’s performance underdifferent coordination strategies involving risk and information sharingbetween the ASP and the AIP. They found several key managerial insights from theirmodel. More importantly, they found an effective decentralized mechanism toachieve the goal of maximizing the overall supply chain performance [6]. Juttnerexamined the business requirements for supply chain risk management. Theyidentified the extent to which organizations are adopting practices to managerisks in their supply chains, explored the critical issues of supply chain riskimplementation as perceived by the practitioners and derived and structured theconcept of SCRM and its characteristics [7].
