Research On Resilient Network Design Of The Fourth-Party Logistics

With the intensification of competition, in order to focus on core businesses, enterprises begin to outsource their logistics to a professional logistics company. At the same time, the fourth party logistics, as a supply chain integrator, is getting more attention. Depending on its strong capability of supply chain integration, the fourth party logistics greatly improves the efficiency of logistics operations, reduces logistics costs. So it is very significant to research on relevant problems about the fourth party logistics.Because logistics service network plays a key role in the improvement of logistics efficiency and the reduction of logistics costs, it is essential to the effective operation of 4PL system. In addition, various external disruptions may make network cannot work normally and pose a threat to the security of 4PL network. So it is very significant to research on how to design a secure and efficient network for 4PL. After the related problems and methods, such as the fourth party logistics, logistics network design, meta-heuristic algorithms, are summarized, a number of issues on 4PL network design are studied based on the idea of resilience.The single-period resilient network design problem of the fourth-party logistics is studied. Firstly, the single-period resilient network design problem of the fourth-party logistics which takes total costs as the objective function is studied. A model of 4PL network design is established, which minimizes the total costs subjective to the resilience constraint. For the NP characteristics of the problem, a hybrid particle swarm optimization with iterated local search method is developed and the performance of the algorithm is tested by randomly generated examples. The experiments verify the validity of the model and indicate that the PSO_ILS outperforms the classic PSO and has robustness against the main parameters. Then, the single-period resilient network design problem of the fourth-party logistics which takes resilience as the objective function is studied. An optimization model is developed, which maximizes the resilience of the network subjective to investment costs. A hybrid probability solution discovery algorithm (PSDA) based on optimal computing budget allocation (OCBA) is introduced. Finally, the performance of the hybrid algorithm is evaluated on randomly generated instances of different sizes, and the results are compared to those obtained by traditional PSDA. The results indicate the significance of the model as well as the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.The multi-period resilient network design problem of the fourth-party logistics is studied. An optimization model of 4PL multi-period network design problem is formulated, which minimize the total costs subjective to the required resilience level in each period. According to the characteristic of the model, an embedded neighborhood search global-best harmony search algorithm is proposed. Finally, several experiments are presented to test the significance of the model as well as the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.The integrated forward/reverse resilient network design problem of the fourth-party logistics is studied. An optimization model of 4PL integrated network design is formulated, which minimizes the total costs with the forward and reverse logistics satisfying the required resilience level. According to the characteristic of the model, a hybrid differential evolution algorithm combined with neighborhood search is developed. Finally, numerical randomly generated experiments are presented to test model and algorithm. The results indicate the significance of the model as well as the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.The multi-period integrated forward/reverse resilient network design problem of the fourth-party logistics is studied. An optimization model of network design is formulated which minimizes the total costs subjective to resilience constraint and optimizes the forward and reverse network simultaneously under multiple operation periods. For the NP characteristics of the problem, an improved ant colony optimization algorithm is developed. Finally, randomly generated examples are used to test the reasonability of the model as well as the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.The results indicate that the proposed improved ant colony optimization algorithm outperforms the standard ant colony optimization algorithm.The resilient network design problem of the fourth party logistics with proactive attack considered is studied. A two-level optimization model of network design for fourth-party logistics is proposed:the top-level model minimizes the total costs subjective to the resilience constraint by determining the network topology, and the down-level model maximizes the attack effect by selecting the attack strategy. For the characteristic of the problem, a two-level optimization algorithm is developed to solve it: probability solution discovery algorithm is used to solve the top-level model, and iterated local search is used to solve the down-level model. Finally, numerical experiments are presented and the results indicate the significance of the model as well as the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.