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Collaborating freight forwarding enterprises

Request allocation and profit sharing

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Abstract

The paper presents a model for the collaboration among independent freight forwarding entities. In the modern highly competitive transportation branch freight forwarders reduce their fulfillment costs by exploiting different execution modes (self-fulfillment and subcontraction). For self-fulfillment they use their own vehicles to execute the requests and for subcontracting they forward the orders to external freight carriers. Further enhancement of competitiveness can be achieved if the freight forwarders cooperate in coalitions in order to balance their request portfolios. Participation in such a coalition gains additional profit for the entire coalition and for each participant, therefore reinforcing the market position of the partners. The integrated operational transport problem as well as existing collaboration approaches are introduced. The presented model for collaboration is based on theoretical foundations in the field of combinatorial auctions and operational research game theory. It is applicable for coalitions of freight forwarders, especially for the collaboration of Profit Centres within large freight forwarding companies. The proposed theoretical approach and the presented collaboration model are suitable for a coalition of freight forwarding companies with nearly similar potential on the market.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) within the SFB637 and by Bremen Innovationsagentur (BIA) sponsored from the EU-fond (project number 2FUE0342B)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of Bremen, Wilhelm-Herbst-Strasse 5, 28359, Bremen, Germany

    Marta Anna Krajewska & Herbert Kopfer

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  1. Marta Anna Krajewska
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  2. Herbert Kopfer
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Correspondence to Marta Anna Krajewska.

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Krajewska, M.A., Kopfer, H. Collaborating freight forwarding enterprises. OR Spectrum 28, 301–317 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00291-005-0031-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00291-005-0031-2

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