Title: Selection of third-party logistics services for internet of things-based agriculture supply chain management

Authors: Sanjeev Yadav; Dixit Garg; Sunil Luthra

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra-136119, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra-136119, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, State Institute of Engineering and Technology (formerly known as Government Engineering College), Nilokheri-132117, India

Abstract: Third-party logistics (3PL) service providers can play a major role in the agriculture supply chain management (ASCM) for customer's satisfaction and cost reduction in managing supply chain. Selection of the suppliers is one of the important factors that need to be considered. Since, by deciding best 3PL supplier, competitiveness and sustainability of supply chain has been increased. However, this decision become complicated when there is multiple 3PL suppliers having multiple criterion and inaccurate parameters. Moreover, the ambiguity and doubtfulness of expert's opinions enhance the problem. Therefore, a decision making tool based on multi criteria has been used widely as fuzzy-analytic hierarchical process (AHP) approach can be used for selection of best 3PL service providers. The main aim of this research is to develop an outline of different criterion for supplier's selection based on literature review and techniques used for selection of the best 3PL suppliers. Furthermore, this research paper provides a more precise, effective and efficient decision support tool for selecting best 3PL providers. This research may help in increasing the tendency for towards the logistics activities outsourcing to enhance sustainability of IoT-based agriculture supply chain.

Keywords: third-party logistics; 3PL; analytic hierarchy process; AHP; fuzzy set theory; multi criteria decision making; MCDM; logistic outsourcing; internet of things; IoT; freight time; goods and service tax; GST.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2020.104780

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2020 Vol.35 No.2, pp.204 - 230

Received: 04 Feb 2018
Accepted: 27 May 2018
Published online: 31 Jan 2020 *

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