Research On Express Enterprises Transportation Mode Choice

With the expansion of express delivery market, more and more transportation methods are now involved in this industry such as planes, high-speed rail and traditional railway. Under this situation, express delivery firms might hesitate when making a rational decision to choose the optimal one from the various methods. With such issue in mind, there is a need for us to study how express delivery firms could choose the transportation method in order to improve the efficiency of decision-making and optimize the transportation combination when they are expanding to new regions. This paper will provide the theory support for decision of express delivery firms on transportation methods.Firstly, this paper starts with the demand of transportation methods and analyses different requirements of transportation methods from the angle of both express delivery firm and its customer. And based on that, we have come up with six elements influencing the decision-making of choosing transportation methods:transportation speed, security, cost, time reliability, network layout and supporting facilities. We also propose an analysis process about choosing of different transportation methods:compare advantages and disadvantages among different methods in terms of the above six elements then choose the optimal one.Secondly, we take comparative analysis to compare Delphi method, Analytic Hierarchy Process, Fuzzy Evaluation method and Gray Relative method. We find the Gray Relative method is more appropriate in terms of overcoming the subjective influence and operability. So we decide to take the gray relative analysis method (GRA) for the study of choosing transportation methods. With the combination of GRA and the six influencing elements, we have formed a new model of choosing transportation method.Last but not least, this paper illustrated the model of choosing transportation method by a case study of SF Express (Group) Co., Ltd. choosing the transportation method between Guangzhou and Changsha. We mainly draw two conclusions:tiem and cost are the two most important elements influencing the transportation methods choosing; air is the most optimal methods for SF Express (Group) Co., Ltd between Guangzhou and Changsha. Through the comparison of the analysis results from the model and reality as well as a series of evaluation, the model shows accountable accuracy and practicability.In addition to the conclusion we reach, this paper also analyzes the limitation of the contents. For example, we did not take qualitative elements into consideration. The index system we build is not comprehensive and the measurements of some index are not accurate. Based on the fact, this paper gives related vision of the future of research.