The Impacts of the Cross-Chain Collaboration Center Model on Transportation Performance: A Case Study of a Bulk Transportation Network in Thailand

This paper studies the impacts of a cross-chain collaboration center model (4CM) on bulk
transportation network performance. The 4CM is based on the interaction and collaboration between shippers
and carriers participating in the transportation network. The network formulation is based on collaborative
bidirectional multi-period vehicle routing (CBMVRP). The performance of the 4CM is represented by three
transportation performance indices, including the percentage differences in the total cost, shipper cost and
carrier cost between the 4CM and single-chain collaboration model (SCCM). The impacts of the 4CM are investigated using ve uncertain input parameters: fuel cost, holding cost, maximum acceptable proportion
of the differences between the cost of a carrier and average cost of all carriers, demand per job and
number of vehicles per carrier. An experiment was conducted according to a central composite design
(CCD). The proposed methodology was applied to assess bulk transportation in Thailand. The computational results revealed that a 4CM can signicantly reduce the differences in the total cost, shipper cost and carrier cost. Moreover, we organized a focus group to collect data about the criteria and the probability of changing from an SCCM to a 4CM of the case study network and generated a classication tree of the levels of possibility to change from an SCCM to a 4CM for each possible situation using the ID3
algorithm.