Moreover, very few papers discuss an efficiency analysis of LSPs. Examples of performance measurement look at the benchmark of different companies analyzing their activity.
Min and Joo (2006) develop a set of financial benchmarks to identify best practices, implementing a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for measuring the operational efficiency of various profit or non-profit organizations.
The operational efficiency is assessed through input/output ratios.
The input parameters selected by the authors are: account receivables, salaries and wages of employees, operating expenses other than salaries and wages, and property and equipment. On the output side, they measure the overall performance only considering the operating income.
Thus, the authors take into account general parameters, which are not strictly related to the daily activities. Wanke (2013) implements three-stage DEA models
and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) to investigate the efficiency of the largest trucking companies in Brazil.
The considered inputs are the number of branches, the employees, the fleet size, and the fuel consumption.
The outputs are total cargo transported (expressed by tons per year) and distance travelled (measured by the kilometers per year).
This paper also proposes an analysis of LSP performance on a year basis.
Another example is provided by Chandraprakaikul and Suebpongsakorn (2012), which benchmarks the performance of 55 logistics companies applying DEA and Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI).
The inputs include the net value of lands, the buildings and the equipment, the shareholder fund, the operating cost, the cost of sales and/or cost of service, and the current liabilities.
Profits and revenues are considered as outputs. Anderson et al. (2005) investigate how new policy measures affect operational activities of freight transport companies.
The authors consider as important indicators of operational activity the total number of rounds, the total time taken per round, the delivery time as % of the total time taken, stationary time as % of the total time taken, the total distance travelled per round, the total vehicle operating cost per round, and the total emissions of pollutants.
According to the authors, these indicators describe the operational, financial and environmental sustainability of vehicle rounds.
Thus, they give an idea of the main aspects about a freight distribution round, but do not discuss their relation with the productivity.