Designing a Transportation-Strategy Decision-Making Process for a Supply Chain: Case of a Pharmaceutical Supply Chain.

Afaf Haial,Abdelaziz Berrado,Loubna Benabbou

doi:10.3390/ijerph18042096

Abstract

Including an active participation of stakeholders along the transportation decision-making process is increasingly recognized as a necessary condition for reaching successful and high-quality decisions. This paper presents a framework for deciding on the appropriate transportation strategy for a supply chain from a multistakeholder perspective. It consists of three steps: (1) defining the transportation-strategy decision-making context and the objectives that must be achieved; (2) analyzing the actual transportation strategy regarding its three components: transportation network; transportation mode; and transportation insource/outsource, as well as identifying the stakeholders interested in the study; and (3) conducting a group decision making regarding each transportation strategy’s component, while involving the key stakeholders and taking into account the specificities of transported products. The proposed framework is then applied to a real case of the Moroccan public pharmaceutical supply chain, which has different features that distinguish it from other supply chains including its importance, urgency, and regulation. We employed the DELPHI method to determine the key stakeholders that should be involved in the decisional process. After that, we applied the group AHP method for selecting the appropriate transport-network design option while involving the identified key stakeholders.

Highlights

As one of the major logistical drivers, transportation has a large impact on both responsiveness and efficiency of the supply chain [1]
In a previous work [63], a framework for designing the appropriate transportation network for a given supply chain, and we have illustrated the application of this framework in choosing the most appropriate transportation-network design option for the Moroccan public pharmaceutical supply chain
We propose, for our future work, to use a modeling approach based on participatory modeling methods such as: the social network analysis (SNA), discrete choice models (DCM), and agent-based models (ABM)

Summary

Introduction

As one of the major logistical drivers, transportation has a large impact on both responsiveness and efficiency of the supply chain [1]. In today’s constantly changing environment, knowing how to successfully navigate these changes and make the appropriate and effective transportation decisions to properly make the products arrive safe to customers at right time, right place, and right cost is a must [3]. Transportation decisions in a supply chain can be characterized as strategic, planning, or operational, depending on the time period during which they apply [1]. The strategic decisions have a long-term impact lasting several years. Planning decisions cover a period of a few months to a year and include decisions such as production plans, subcontracting, and promotions over that period. We are interested in the strategic decisions as long-term decisions that focus on the overall supply-chain transportation system

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Discussion

Conclusion