Research on Collaborative Distribution Model Considering Distribution Capability Constraints of Enterprises and Its Influence on Cost Allocation
Delivery vehicles are limited resources in firms with capital-intensive assets,such as distribution enterprises,which must guarantee high availability and revenue returns.Collaboration via resource sharing among distribution enterprises provides an opportunity to effectively increase the efficiency and sustainability of logistics operations.However,the limitation of the available vehicle capacity will possibly lead to the shortage of distribution capacity and even the failure of collaboration in the distribution process.This problem is modelled as an integer programming which minimizes vehicle routing costs,fixed costs,and possible vehicle rental costs for sub-alliances,named the multi-owner collaborative vehicle routing problem model with limited distribution capability.A vehicle make-up strategy is developed for supplementary vehicles.It allows enterprises with insuf-ficient vehicles to first seek available capacity from members with idle vehicles within the alliance.If their capac-ity is still not met,vehicle-leasing decisions from other distribution companies outside the alliance must be taken,while paying higher rents as result.Through the vehicle make-up strategy,the cost can be accurately quantified with the model and then a fair and reasonable allocation result is obtained.Then,the Shapley value equation is applied to determine the cost to be shared by each member.Our numerical study on a testbed of instances demonstrates the value of vehicle make-up strategy and the benefits of collaboration.The collabora-tive distribution leads to significant savings for all members,with a cost reduction of 13.34％to 20.84％compared with individual delivery,even when each alliance members lease a higher-cost vehicle,the total cost savings can reach 12.62％to 19.41％.The benefits of first seeking inside the alliance to find idle vehicles,which are rarely discussed in previous articles,are obvious with a reduction of the additional expenses triggered by vehicle shortages.The numerical results demonstrate that it is still profitable for firms to join collaborative distribution even the delivery capacity is insufficient and need to pay higher rents to lease vehicles.Furthermore,collaboration shows to be particularly attractive for enterprises with high facility reserves,obtain-ing extra awards through additional cost reduction.The research results have important reference value and practical significance for distribution enterprises who adopt collaborative distribution mechanism and correspond-ing cost allocation with considering the insufficient vehicle capacity.
collaborative distributiondistribution capacity constraintscost savingsShapley value method
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