Institute of Transportation, MOTC

Chien-Yun Yuan, 2007.01

Institute of Traffic and Transportation National Chiao Tung University

  　　Global Logistics Management (GLM) has become an important issue in responding to the changing global market. The efficiency of global distribution is playing a critical role. With quick delivery and the objective to minimize total cost, transportation integration is essential within the supply chain, and transportation capability has become a critical opportunity in the supply chain process. The purpose of Supply Chain Management (SCM) is to improve the collaborative effort among various business partners. Collaborative Transportation Management (CTM) is a new collaboration model in supply chain execution. Past studies in supply chain collaboration mostly focused on the vertical collaboration of supply chain parties. Little attention, however, has been paid to the impact of transportation management on SCM. The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between CTM and business performance and how the CTM influence the dynamic behavior of supply chain. The main themes include- the application of CTM to global logistics, what are important determinants of CTM adoption, the relationship between CTM and logistics performance, organizational performance, and the effects of CTM on supply chain cost, bullwhip effect and transportation capacity utilization.

　　Based on prior research in innovation adoption and supply chain integration, a measurement instrument of CTM was developed. From the perspective of transportation demand (shipper), the study focused on the information technology industry in Taiwan. Both of the reliability and validity analysis were examined. Based on the Discriminant Analysis of the differences between adopters and non-adopters, five factors, relative advantage, competitive pressure, vertical link, top management support, and business size, were found to be the major determinants of the adoption of CTM in the IT industry in Taiwan. The relationship between three dimensions of CTM, relationship integration, collaborative forecasting and planning, information technology integration and business performance was hypothesized. Used the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), relationship integration and information technology integration has significant impact on logistics performance; the impact of information technology integration on organization performance is significant; when logistics performance was used as a mediate variable, the impact of relationship integration on organization performance is significant. The results indicate that higher levels of CTM can lead to performance improvement.

　　This study also based on the Beer Game model and applied System Dynamics approach to develop a supply chain simulation model with CTM for quantifying its impacts on the holistic supply chain. Three different scenarios were simulated (1) unconstrained transportation capacity without CTM; (2) constrained transportation capacity without CTM; and (3) constrained transportation capacity with CTM. The manufactures, distributors and Logistics Service Providers (LSP) are considered as the partners of CTM. The results showed that the potential supply chain cost savings and the bullwhip effect of supply chain as well as the overall transportation capacity utilization are improved. This study found that the improvement of cost is with time delay from upstream to downstream and is varied with time. The impacts on the downstream are not immediately, and are limited by the structure of supply chain. The supply chain costs are affected by the maximum available transportation capacity and irrelevant to minimum available transportation capacity. The effects of CTM become significant with the increase of unit inventory cost or unit backlog cost. Supply chain cost is diminishing with order delay reduction.

　　Collaborative Transportation Management is a new issue, which is in its burgeon stage. This study may provide information for business and the logistics service providers about what are determinants of CTM adoption, and what are impacts of CTM on logistics performance, organizational performance, supply chain cost, bullwhip effect and transportation capacity utilization. It is helpful to shipper and LSP to establish or improve the external integration, and to LSP to apply some related strategies.