Keywords

1 Introduction

Freight transportation, as a necessary element of each supply chain, is the set of activities connected with relocation of shipments in time and space with proper means [1, 2]. It is covering a distance or a change of place of goods using the transport facilities [3]. The general definition of the transportation defines it as a process which is the finite sequence of activities necessary to relocate shipments [4]. The set of transportation processes creates the transportation system. It is defined as a set of components such as transportation infrastructure, fleet of vehicles, human resources and governing rules that ensure a coordinated and efficient transfer of goods from their origins to destinations in a certain area [5]. One of the types of transportation system is the global transportation system which covers the whole world, continent, a specific group of countries or an economic group [6]. It has a huge influence on functioning of the international trade exchange where costs and time of transportation are very important [7].

What is more, effectiveness mainly determines transportation process as it involves transportation of the goods to the indicated destination and its efficiency, meaning the ability to optimize all resources in order to conduct the whole process effectively. There are, however, several methods which may increase the transport efficiency. One of such measures is decision making, based on the careful analysis which takes into account all gauges for transport evaluation. They are time of transport, costs of transport, reliability of transport, its timeliness and flexibility.

Next important part of the global transportation system is the global transportation corridor/solution. It ensures the transfer of significant passenger and freight traffic flows between separate geographic regions. It also contains infrastructural objects (mobile means of transportation and stationary equipment) of all transport modes occurring in a given corridor, as well as all technological, organizational and legal conditions for carrying out these transports [8]. This is a concept of moving goods between supply chain links on a described scale with the application of a single-mode, multimodal, intercontinental and worldwide transportation. The transportation corridors must fit the local or global configuration of manufacturing and distribution systems and strategies to provide the desired customer service at the lowest possible cost and to maximize the supply chain profit [9].

Effectiveness factors mainly determine the whole transportation process, which should be taken into account while creation of freight corridors. Also, selection of necessary corridors should be based on the complex analysis, including all factors which may have an impact on transport effectiveness.

The overall research goal of this paper is to evaluate the global transportation corridors, taking into account their effectiveness. The authors claim that this aspect has a multiple-criteria character, and thus, they develop the proposed approach based on the principles of multiple-criteria decision making/aiding (MCDM/A). The challenge and the novelty of this work are to present a coherent set of evaluation criteria for the transportation corridors, including all gauges considered in evaluation of transportation effectiveness.

The hypothesis of this work indicates the way of evaluating and selecting the most efficient global transportation solution, generating various possibilities based on the multiple-criteria analysis.

In the practical part of this paper, the authors describe alternative global transportation corridors between China and Central Europe (Poland) based on a multimodal transportation process used by the enterprise operating in energy and automation industry. Next, the authors evaluate them with a consistent family of criteria, model the decision maker’s (DM’s) preferences and carry out a series of computational experiments with the application of selected MCDM/A ranking methods. As a result, the final rankings of transportation options are generated that give the DM the most efficient transportation solution.

2 Methodological Background of the Research

2.1 Factors Contributing to Transport Effectiveness

The term “effectiveness” plays a crucial role in modern logistics although it leads to many problems on operational, tactical or strategy level. Thus, the evaluation of transportation corridors effectiveness should be subject to separate research which would involve all factors determining the corridors effectiveness, e.g., transportation process. Various researchers indicate logistics gauges as relevant to transport evaluation, which are all presented in Table 1.

Table 1 Logistics gauges in transport evaluation
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Usage of logistics gauges may provide information about transportation process, detect all deviations from the transportation plan and also improve whole transport and its particular elements (including transportation corridors) making it more competitive. Based on the analyzed literature, evaluation of the global transportation corridors effectiveness (referred to as variants in the next section of this paper) included various logistics gauges (variants evaluation criteria), as described in Table 2.

Table 2 Global transportation corridors effectiveness evaluation criteria
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Table 2 forms a relevant family of evaluation criteria which is one of the most important elements of applied methodology of multiple-criteria decision making—further presented in the next section of this paper.

2.2 Principles of MCDM/A and Description of the Applied Methods

Multiple-criteria decision making (MCDM) also known as a multi-criteria decision aid or multi-criteria decision support derives from operational research [17, 18]. Such method supports DM (person who defines decision problem) with rules, tools and methods in solving complex decision problems, considering several—often contradictory—points of view [19, 20]. Evaluation process involves different aspects of the considerate variants of multi-dimensional nature (which are also hardly comparable) in order to select the best alternative [21, 22].

The main components of multiple-criteria decision problems are:

  • a set of solutions (variants) A which are analyzed and evaluated in decision process (global transportation corridors in this case study);

  • a consistent family of criteria F (global transportation corridors evaluation criteria in the case study).

Each criterion in the family of criteria F is used to evaluate the A set and represents the DM’s preferences in relation to a proper aspect of a decision problem.

To solve multiple decision problems, various tools, procedures or methods can be used. They can be generally divided into two groups [20, 23, 24]:

  • the methods of American inspiration based on the utility function, referred to as the unique criterion of synthesis methods, e.g., UTA, AHP;

  • the methods of the European/French origin, based on the outranking relation, considering incomparability relation, e.g., Electre, Promethee and Oreste.

Electre III/IV and Promethee II, two ranking methods, have been applied in order to evaluate transportation corridors effectiveness in this paper. They are indicated by the researchers as the most popular methods implementing the outranking relations framework [25].

2.3 Description of Electre III/IV Method

Electre III/IV method belongs to a family of Electre methods, proposed by Roy [26]. It is a universal, multi-dimensional ranking method, based on the outranking relation [19, 20, 22, 26, 27]. In this method, the basic set of data is composed of the following elements: a finite set of variants, a family of criteria and the preferential information submitted by the DM. The preferential information is defined in the form of criteria weights and the indifference, preference and veto thresholds [5]. (The thresholds define the sensitivity of the DM to the changes of the criteria values and the weight expresses the importance of each criterion.) Computational algorithm of Electre III/IV comprises of three stages [28]:

  1. I.

    matrix evaluation construction and definition of the DM’s preference model;

  2. II.

    outranking relation construction;

  3. III.

    outranking relation implementation.

Electre III/IV algorithm generates the final ranking of variants and orders them from the best to the worst. The following relations may occur between variants: equivalence, outranking, reverse outranking and incomparability.

2.4 Description of Promethee II Method

Promethee method was introduced by Brans et al. [29, 30] to preference rank a set of decision alternatives, based on their values over a number of different criteria. Put simply, a ranking of alternatives is based on the accumulative preference comparisons of pairs of alternatives’ values over the different criteria (using generalized preference functions) [31]. The Promethee method will provide the DM with a ranking of actions (choices or alternatives) based on preference degrees. The method falls into three main steps:

  1. I.

    the computation of preference degrees for every ordered pair of actions on each criterion;

  2. II.

    the computation of unicriterion flows;

  3. III.

    the computation of global flows.

Based on the global flows, a ranking of the actions will be obtained as well as a graphical representation of the decision problem [32].

The difference between Electre III/IV and Promethee II methods is key parameters. Electre requires indifference, preference and veto thresholds, while Promethee requires only indifference and preference thresholds.

3 Description of Decision Situation

3.1 Verbal Description

This paper presents the issue of evaluation and selection of the most effective global transportation corridor (China–Poland) for the international daughter company operating in energy and automation industry. The company is located in Łódź, Central Poland. It manufactures distribution transformers and power transformers as well as insulation components used in power transformers. Most of the suppliers’ warehouses are located in Europe; nonetheless, some of the components need to be delivered from the Far East, China.

The delivery process from China is affected by a number of various difficulties, mainly caused by huge delivery distance and length of transportation process. The company uses several transportation variants offered by a forwarding company, responsible for the whole transportation process under the general contractor agreement.

It was the reason why the transportation director—DM in the decision situation—did not undertake any analysis of different transportation variants (global transportation corridors) against the criteria of their effectiveness (including the following criteria: costs, time, degree of utilization of means of transport, timeliness, reliability, flexibility and safety or customer’s comfort).

What is more, due to the last year increase in delivery costs of materials transported from China, DM finally decided to carry out a detailed analysis and evaluation of global transportation corridors. The aim was to improve their effectiveness, in particular, costs and time reduction and improvement of security and timeliness. Thus, DM would examine all possible transportation options.

3.2 Characteristics of Variants—Global Transportation Corridors

Selection of the most effective global transportation corridor is defined as a multiple-criteria problem of variants ranking. The considered variants correspond to the modes of transport (China/supplier’s warehouse—Poland/Łódź) V1–V4 (Table 3). Analyzed transportation corridors include four transport modes: transport by sea, rail, air or road.

Table 3 Variants—global transportation corridors—in decision situation
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As DM has not yet undertake an evaluation of current transportation corridors, the selection of the most effective solution must be based on the comprehensive analysis. Thus, a number of criteria will be applied, determining the effectiveness of each transportation corridor.

Based on the variants evaluation criteria and the original raw data, the evaluation matrix has been constructed. The importance wages of the criteria were formulated on the basis of the interview with the DM, his preferences and aspirations (Table 4).

Table 4 The evaluation matrix in described case study
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Main global transportation corridors evaluation criteria in terms of their effectiveness are time of transport (K2), costs of transport (K1), timeliness of transport (K4) and transport reliability (K5). The results of computational experiments, based on Electre III/IV and Promethee II methods, are described in the next section of this paper.

4 Computational Experiments

Due to formal limitations of the study, the results of computational procedures were reduced to presentation of the final rankings, identifying the position of the variants in relation to global transportation corridors.

In accordance with the Electre III/IV method algorithm, the evaluation matrix has been constructed and the DM’s preference model has been defined. In the second stage of the algorithm, the outranking relation has been constructed. In the third stage of the algorithm, the outranking relation has been applied and on the basis on the indexes of the variants (global transportation corridors V1–V4), the ascending and descending distillations have been performed, formulating the structure of complete preorders. Then, they have been averaged into the median ranking, and the intersection of preorders resulted in the final ranking. The results of these transportation corridors selection calculations are presented in Fig. 1a.

Fig. 1
figure 1

The final ranking in the case study. a Electre III/IV method, b Promethee II method

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In accordance with the Promethee II method algorithm, the evaluation matrix has been constructed and the DM’s preference model has been defined in the process of naming the wages of criteria and thresholds: indifference and preference. Due to experimental procedures, the final ranking has been obtained, as shown in Fig. 1b.

According to the final ranking, based on Electre III/IV method, the most effective global transportation corridor is variant V4, implementing air transport for the longest transport route. It clearly outranks the other variants, against six out of eight evaluation criteria. Its strongest values are very short period of transport (K2), high degree of means of transport utilization (K3), excellent timeliness (K4), reliability (K5) and flexibility (K6) of transport and finally, very low rate of goods’ damages during transportation process (K7). The interesting fact is that variant V4 represents the most expensive solution what is compensated by other values of the variant. The least effective global transportation corridor is variant V1, using transport by sea. Although it offers the cheapest price (K1), the other criteria are ranked very poorly.

The results generated with the application of Promethee II method are fast identical to those produced by the application of Electre III/IV method. Promethee II method indicated a slight difference between transportation corridors V2 and V3, whereas in the ranking of Electre III/IV method, they were ranked on the equivalent position. The authors of this paper recommend selection of global transportation corridor V4 as it is the most effective solution according to the conducted computational procedures. If DM would define cost criterion as the most important in the final selection, then variant V2 is the best solution, ranking on the second position in both cases.

5 Final Conclusions

The paper presents evaluation and ranking of global transportation corridors used by company operating in energy and automation industry, based on the multiple-criteria decision making/aiding (MCDM/A). The decision problem was formed as a multiple-criteria problem of ranking variants. Two methods were applied in order to generate the final ranking of global transportation corridors, namely Electre III/IV and Promethee II. The novelty of this paper was output of logistics gauges implementation into the final evaluation of global transportation corridors.

The paper contains not only methodological values but also utility functions. The methodological approach is based on the identification of the criteria which may determine the effectiveness of global transportation corridors. In practical terms, the authors demonstrate that the most effective solution is variant V4 which, although not the cheapest, is characterized by many other advantages. Thus, the authors of this paper recommend the selection of global transportation corridor V4 as it is the most effective and desired. At the same time, for the customer of lower sensitivity on the price, variant V2 is considerable.