evaluation of maturity in integration of management systems in second party logistic companies: a hybrid approach using fuzzy ahp and multivariate analysis

Second party logistic providers (2pl) is a critical link in the supply chain management as companies that provide outsourcing services such as storage and transport to reduce the operational costs, increase the efficiency and underpin the organizations to generate added value in their products and services. although, this sector presents operational inefficiencies in costs, use of technology, transport infrastructure, and the application of methodologies for improving the performance in areas such as quality, occupational health and safety, environment, and secure commerce. for those mentioned above, the companies decrease their capability to comply with the requirements and regulations of the customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. in this regard, the integrated management systems can support of the second party logistic providers through the application of continuous improvement cycle in their value chain, with benefits in the performance of the companies and impacts on productivity, competitiveness, and sustainability of the sector wich depends of the level of maturity in the integration of management systems. however, due to the complexity of the sector, it is necessary to develop methodologies and frameworks for the objective evaluation of maturity in the integration of management systems. in this regard, the evidence related to the conditions and maturity in the implementation of ims in the 2pl companies is limited and provides little information and solutions for the sector. the goal of this work is the evaluation of maturity in integration of management systems in 2pl companies dedicated to offer transport and storage services through the develop and application of hybrid methodology using a multi-criteria decision-making model such as fuzzy ahp and multivariate analysis, in order to provide a framework for diagnosis and continuous improvement in the sector. first, the multivariate method of factorial analysis was used, after validation of the reliability and significance of the evaluation instrument, to classify the companies in differentiated groups considering their level of maturity in integration of management systems. likewise, to correlate the influence of critical variables such as seniority, size, number of employees with the level of performance, with which improvement strategies are defined by companies in the sector analyzed. then, the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (fahp) was applied to reconcile human subjectivity and the multiple criteria in the evaluation process under uncertainly. in this regard, fahp is used to estimate the global and local weights of criteria and sub-criteria in the ponderation. the results show that the methodology allows not only to evaluate the maturity of companies through significant key variables, which is reflected quantitatively and through 4 groups of companies according to their performance. likewise, the findings show that aspects such as size, seniority, and the national or international scope of the companies, affect the level of maturity in integration of management systems. the main contribution of this proposed methodology applied in the second party logistics companies is to provide an objective instrument for evaluation and improvement through the use and interaction of computational tools and statistics.