Designing a Transportation-Strategy Decision-Making Process for a Supply Chain: Case of a Pharmaceutical Supply Chain

Abstract

Including an active participation of stakeholders along the transportation decision-making process is increasingly recognized as a necessary condition for reaching successful and high-quality decisions. This paper presents a framework for deciding on the appropriate transportation strategy for a supply chain from a multistakeholder perspective. It consists of three steps: (1) defining the transportation-strategy decision-making context and the objectives that must be achieved; (2) analyzing the actual transportation strategy regarding its three components: transportation network; transportation mode; and transportation insource/outsource, as well as identifying the stakeholders interested in the study; and (3) conducting a group decision making regarding each transportation strategy’s component, while involving the key stakeholders and taking into account the specificities of transported products. The proposed framework is then applied to a real case of the Moroccan public pharmaceutical supply chain, which has different features that distinguish it from other supply chains including its importance, urgency, and regulation. We employed the DELPHI method to determine the key stakeholders that should be involved in the decisional process. After that, we applied the group AHP method for selecting the appropriate transport-network design option while involving the identified key stakeholders.