Using a Novel Grey DANP Model to Identify Interactions between Manufacturing and Logistics Industries in China

Abstract

As a crucial part of producer services, the logistics industry is highly dependent on the manufacturing industry. In general, the interactive development of the logistics and manufacturing industries is essential. Due to the existence of a certain degree of interdependence between any two factors, interaction between the two industries has produced a basis for measurement; identifying the key factors affecting the interaction between the manufacturing and logistics industries is a kind of decision problem in the field of multiple criteria decision making (MCDM). A hybrid MCDM method, DEMATEL-based ANP (DANP) is appropriate to solve this problem. However, DANP uses a direct influence matrix, which involves pairwise comparisons that may be more or less influenced by the respondents. Therefore, we propose a decision model, Grey DANP, which can automatically generate the direct influence matrix. Statistical data for the logistics and manufacturing industries in the China Statistical Yearbook (2006–2015) were used to identify the key factors for interaction between these two industries. The results showed that the key logistics criteria for interaction development are the total number of employees in the transport business, the volume of goods, and the total length of routes. The key manufacturing criteria for interaction development are the gross domestic product and the value added. Therefore, stakeholders should increase the number of employees in the transport industry and freight volumes. Also, the investment in infrastructure should be increased.