Multiple Criteria Evaluation of Transportation Performance for Selected Agribusiness Companies

Abstract

This paper presents the analysis of transportation activities carried out in different agribusiness entities and resulting in the overall ranking of transportation units operating in the considered agribusiness companies. It is assumed that all these units utilize their own fleet and thus arrange transportation services, by themselves, as the company's internal activities. The data for analysis is obtained from the survey research carried out on a sample of transportation units operating in 10 agribusiness companies. The authors define a consistent family of criteria that allows to evaluate transportation activity in an agribusiness industry, including both universal merits and industry specific transportation features. The evaluation matrix is constructed and the ranking of 10 transportation units is generated. It is based on a subjective model of preferences defined by the decision maker (DM) - the management teams of the analyzed agribusiness companies. The defined model of preferences includes the interests of different stakeholders, such as: customers, employees (in particular drivers) and the society. In the computational phase a multiple criteria ranking procedure called Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method is applied. A series of computational experiments is carried out. As a result a company featured by the most desirable transportation performance is selected.