ABSTRACT
In this chapter, many hybrid rough set approaches are used in transport scheme choice decision of the supply chain network, and we compare and analyze the decision results from dierent approaches.
8.1 A Survey of Transport Scheme Choice Transport is the displacement of products from one place to another in supply chain. Transport cost is a crucial part of the supply chain cost, so transport plays a very important role in a supply chain. In 1996, American goods transport cost reached $455 billion, which accounted for about 6 percent of GDP. With the development of e-business and goods-to-door service, the position of transport cost in retailing is even more outstanding. Every transport decision affects profit, inventory decision, and facilities decision in supply chain, while the aim of the supply chain is not only to provide a proper response sensitivity for customers, but also to cut down on total cost. The success of a supply chain is strongly linked to the reasonable choice of transport pattern. Inventory cost is also important when transport decision is made and, if ignored, inf luences the operational performance of supply chains. In the process of making transport decision of the supply chain network design, enterprises have to make choices among inventory, freight, and response ability. For example, Dell’s cost
of packaging personal computers to customers increases, but this makes it possible to lay out all kinds of its facilities intensively. If Dell wants to cut down its transport cost, then it can either lower the sensitivity of customers’ demand response or increase the number of the facilities and establish stores near its customer bases. It is important to keep a balance between transport cost and inventory cost. Quick transport pattern is suitable for high value/weight products, because decreasing the inventory is important for these products; slower transport pattern, on the other hand, is suitable for low value/weight products, because cutting down the cost is most important. The transport cost caused by supply chain has a close relationship with the response ability of the supply chain. If an enterprise reacts swiftly, and it delivers goods when receiving orders on the same day, then its delivery scale becomes smaller, which will result in high freight. If an enterprise lowers its response ability, and deliver goods intensively ordered during a long period of time, then it will gain scale economy by means of batch delivering. Delivering goods intensively when postponing the shipment and lowering the response ability can cut down the transport cost.
