BENCHMARKING LOGISTICS PERFORMANCE WITH AN APPLICATION OF THE ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS

In the increasingly turbulent environment, logistics strategic managem ent has become a necessity for achieving competitive advantage, The us e of benchmarking is widening as a technique for supporting logistics strategic management. Benchmarking can be described as the search for the best practices leading to a superior performance of a company, In this paper, we demonstrate how the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) ca n be used for supporting a generic logistics benchmarking process, Fir st, the customers of a company are interviewed in order to define the logistic critical success factors and to determine their importance, T he performance levels of the companies to be benchmarked are then eval uated with regard to each success factor, Second, the factors enabling the companies to achieve superior logistics performance are determine d and prioritized with respect to each success factor, Third, the stre ngths, weaknesses, and problems of the company conducting the benchmar king process are analyzed and prioritized with respect to each enabler , Then the potential developmental actions for achieving superior logi stics performance are defined and prioritized. In addition to supporti ng the three steps mentioned above, the AHP-based approach forms the b asic framework for a continuous logistics benchmarking process.