Systematic Selection of Digitization Technologies in Transport Logistics Processes based on a Multi-criteria Decision Analysis

Digitization has become an integral part of today's business landscape, and the field of transportation logistics is no exception. Nevertheless, the selection of a suitable digitization technology presents users with major challenges, such as the heterogeneous system landscape, the process-specific requirements, and the decision based on the technology specifications. This paper presents a systematic procedure for selecting suitable digitization technologies using the example of a transport logistics forwarding process. For this purpose, the transport logistics process is first systematically surveyed and modeled using the established modeling notation BPMN 2.0. Based on the process model, the requirements regarding the necessary process information are elicited. A proposed system architecture provides the consideration horizon of possible digitization technologies that can be applied. The selection is based on process-related selection criteria and the specifications of the different technology alternatives. Here, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used as an approach for multi-criteria decision analysis to concretize the digitization technologies available for selection into a final decision set. The paper is concluded by a sensitivity analysis and critical appraisal of the author's own work. The main contribution of this work is the application of the well-established AHP with a strong focus on sensitivity analysis in a new field, such as transport logistics, in order to select a suitable digitization technology in a specific use case.