Research On The Fourth Party Logistics Optimizing Core Enterprise Logistics In Automobile Supply Chain

Due to further refinement of the social division of labor, business-to-business relationship becomes closer than ever before, which means competition among enterprises as different individual entities transforms into the competition between supply chains. Under such circumstances, as a business-to-business link and a business-to-customer link, the competitiveness performance of logistics industry has become the key to corporate success. A new logistics system is required to match the new economic environment, which helped to create a new form of logistics– the Fourth Party Logistics, which, as a new idea, marks the emergence of a new era of logistics.The Fourth Party Logistics means an integrator or an integrated supply chain business assembles, as its main responsibility, the resources, capabilities, and technology of its own organization and other organizations to design and provide integrated supply chain solutions. Compared with the Third Party Logistics providing professional services with low cost, the Fourth Party Logistics can control and manage the entire logistics process, offering the proposed planning program of the whole process and integrating the procedure through e-commerce in order to achieve fast, high-quality and cost-effective logistics services. Its development caters for the requirements for the logistics system in the whole community, maximizing the integration of social resources, reducing the time of goods circulation, saving resources, improving the efficiency of the logistics and reducing environmental pollution. The Fourth Party Logistics'domination in companies'logistics business will surely be the future trend in logistics development.Automobile logistics has been recognized as the most complex areas of logistics industry, involving many sectors with specific technical skills and a high degree of complexity in operation. In recent years, since China's auto industry is confronted with global competition and increasing competitive pressure from declining prices on the market, how to control and reduce logistics costs is an important factor to maintain the firms'competitiveness in the market. What is more, the development in automobile industry exerts a decisive impact on the whole industries in the economy, contributing greatly to ideas and thoughts of corporate management, especially promoting innovation in the manufacturing production. Therefore, this paper combines the mode of Fourth Party Logistics with the core enterprises in automobile supply chain (namely motor vehicle manufacturers), studying the impacts on car manufacturers to optimize logistics.The paper starts with providing a theoretical basis for research, analysing and generalizing the definition of logistics and business logistics, supply chain theories and supply chain management and the Fourth Party Logistics. Its theoretical research puts stress on the theory of Fourth Party Logistics, covering the concept of Fourth Party Logistics, the relationship between the Fourth Party Logistics and supply chain and the relationship between the Fourth and Third Party Logistics in more detail. Then, after examining the current performance of motor vehicle manufacturers in logistics operation under the present automobile supply chain setting, we can identify the following problems: China's auto industry does not yet enjoy unified logistics standards; Information Technology applied in automobile logistics in China is rather limited; the logistics cost of automobile supply chain is extremely high; automobile manufacturers lack cooperation with both the lower and higher reaches of the automobile supply chain; the services provided by the Third Party Logistics is currently weak, restricting the logistics efficiency and effectiveness. Therefore, the paper provides a solution that the mode of Fourth Party Logistics should be applied in the automobile manufacturers'operation. Next, in terms of its application, this paper focuses on studying both the mode of operation of the Fourth Party Logistics and the integrated solutions to the logistics operation in automobile manufacturers. Finally, the study stresses on how the Fourth Party Logistics optimizes logistics channels in the auto manufacturers in order to achieve their operation goals of reducing logistics costs, improving customer service levels, increasing their core competitiveness and enhancing the competitive advantage of automobile supply chain.