Causal mechanism in transport collaboration

The changing climate in supply chain management, driven by technological trends, increased competition , demand pressure, globalization and outsourcing has led companies to be more receptive to forming coalitions while taking a broader strategic view of the marketplace. The structure of a transport coalition is an important issue influencing the life cycle of such relationships. This structure is a set of consensual relationships that connect key operating criteria for the coalition. The structure can change over time. This structural change is causal and its extreme situation might cause deterioration of the coalition. This work proposes a systematic way of analyzing the causal inference mechanism between the operating col-laborative criteria and their categories in transport collaboration using a fuzzy cognitive map based approach. The findings address the decision making on the level of collaborative integration of coalition by the detection thresholds according to ''go'', ''go with conditions'' and ''no-go'' signals. This approach is supported with the application to a ''real world'' case of a multi-echelon heterarchical transport network through a series of simulation experiments. Transport management is a highly leveraged function for value creation meaning that even small improvements in business processes can drive large increases in profitability and cost reduction (Stank & Goldsby, 2000). Therefore the transport industry has seen a recent emergence of strategic collaborative initiatives Studies have shown that there is a notable realization of collabora-tive actions in the business of freight transport with particular increases in the use of intermodal shipments and the improvement of carrier tracking and shipment consolidation (Graham, 2011). Transport collaboration can be considered to be a strategic asset for optimizing the supply chain and improving the competitiveness of companies (Kayikci & Zsifkovits, 2012). Therefore, transport users, transport service providers and/or technology providers establish coalition communities in order to reap benefits from joint operational processes. Since every coalition has unique aspects, there is no ''one size fits all approach'' for building a transport collaboration. That being said, the structure of a collaboration should contain the combination of automated and adaptive technologies , business processes and proactive human collaboration in socio-technical systems (Gaurav, 2004; Ritter, Lyons, & Swindler, 2007). Success for a transport coalition is achieved when the above-mentioned combination is strategically aligned for every coalition partner. The structure of transport collaboration can change over time. This change in the structure is causal (Dickerson & Kosko, 1998). The analysis of causal mechanisms among critical criteria …