Collaboration in Knowledge Sharing and Developing in Inbound Logistics Outsourcing from Manufacturers Perspective

The author investigates the knowledge sharing and collaboration between a manufacturer and a third part logistics provider (3PLP) in the process of manufacturer’s inbound logistics outsourcing. From the perspective of the manufacturer, and following game theory, the analysis was focused on two scenarios, in which considered the influence of both sides prior logistics knowledge creation efforts or not respectively, the equilibrium values of the manufacturer’s participating level in logistics knowledge sharing and developing, the current collaboration efforts of logistics knowledge creation, and the optimal entire system profit were solved, and the relationships among the three system parameters in and cross of two scenarios were analyzed. The result shows that the manufacturer’s participation level in knowledge sharing and developing is a function of the ratio between dyadic marginal profits of the logistics collaboration performance, which is independent to the prior efforts of both sides. And the condition for manufacturer participating collaboration was identified. Then, the influence of prior efforts in logistics knowledge creation from two parts on system parameter was investigated as well.