A strategic knowledge-based planning system for freight forwarding industry

In recent years, over half of the Hong Kong freight forwarding firms experienced a decline in business volume due to the growing challenge from the neighbour ports of Yantian and Shekou in Shenzhen, China, which operated in a much cheaper mode. In order to remain competitive, local freight forwarders in Hong Kong must establish a long-term union relationship with their customers such as the provision of customized logistics services. One of the ways is through the use of a co-loading shipment plan, which is a knowledge intensive and complex process involving multiple knowledge source and decision rules. This paper presents hybrid knowledge and model system, which integrates mathematical models with knowledge rules, in the formulation of such co-loading shipment plans. A strategic knowledge-based planning system, (SKPS) integrates knowledge rules with mathematical model for solving problems of co-loading shipment plans formulation and market constriction prevention, is proposed. The system was implemented in Elite World Logistics Service Limited (EW), a local freight forwarding company, for supporting the planning process of a co-loading shipping plan. The result reveals that both customer retention rate and resource utilization has increased significantly.