Performance measurement of India-based third party logistics sector: an empirical study of user versus provider perspectives

Abstract

The global third-party logistics (3PL) market was valued at US $802 billion in 2016 and is projected to exceed US $1.1 trillion by 2022. It is becoming increasingly essential for the 3PL service providers’ and 3PL service users’ to adjust their future logistics strategies and operations to be part of a wider ecosystem featuring digital infrastructure involving Internet of Things (IoT), big data, localized systems of value creation, which is likely to result in a distributed manufacturing paradigm. To enable development of effective future logistics strategies, which deals with the challenges mentioned above – we collected data by conducting 600 structured interviews from 300 senior management, middle management and front-line managers based at 3PL Service Providers’, and 3PL Service Users’ via a matched-pair design. The respondents were located in India and had a PAN-India geographical and industrial coverage. We present an analysis of the current differences in the current capabilities and requirements of 3PL service providers’ and service users, and by assessing how these differences can be bridged, to develop the necessary capabilities of being able to respond to a distributed manufacturing paradigm environment, which is being driven by IoT and encompass smart city products and ‘hybrid’ technologies and products.