Selection of 3PL service suppliers using a fuzzy analytic network process

The use of logistics outsourcing or third-party logistics (3PL) is becoming a global trend. For suiting the needs of outsourcing companies, here raises a critical issue of how companies can evaluate and select a favorable logistics service provider. However, choosing a proper logistics service provider is a kind of multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) problem, which requires considering a large number of complex factors. The analytic network process (ANP) is a relative new MCDM theory of measurement used to deal with complex decision issues with dependence and feedback However, the approach is incapable of capturing the vagueness and fuzziness during value judgment elicitation. In view of this, a method to select a proper 3PL provider is proposed by applying an fuzzy ANP (FANP). The merits of the FANP lie in, not only could it handle the complexity of the problem structure, but also it may soundly deal with the judgments derived from intrinsically imprecise information. Finally, a real case application is given to validate the feasibility of the proposed approach.