Copyright © 2012 Weihua Liu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

With the increasing demand for customized logistics services in the manufacturing industry, the key factor in realizing the competitiveness of a logistics service supply chain (LSSC) is whether it can meet specific requirements with the cost of mass service. In this case, in-depth research on the time-scheduling of LSSC is required. Setting the total cost, completion time, and the satisfaction of functional logistics service providers (FLSPs) as optimal targets, this paper establishes a time scheduling model of LSSC, which is constrained by the service order time requirement. Numerical analysis is conducted by using Matlab 7.0 software. The effects of the relationship cost coefficient and the time delay coefficient on the comprehensive performance of LSSC are discussed. The results demonstrate that with the time scheduling model in mass-customized logistics services (MCLSs) environment, the logistics service integrator (LSI) can complete the order earlier or later than scheduled. With the increase of the relationship cost coefficient and the time delay coefficient, the comprehensive performance of LSSC also increases and tends towards stability. In addition, the time delay coefficient has a better effect in increasing the LSSC’s comprehensive performance than the relationship cost coefficient does.