Creative Design and Manufacture using Big Data - Research Article

Advances in Mechanical Engineering

2019, Vol. 11(1) 1–9
Ó The Author(s) 2019
An evaluation method for green DOI: 10.1177/1687814018816878
journals.sagepub.com/home/ade
logistics system design of agricultural
products: A case study in Shandong
province, China

Songyuan Ni1, Yu Lin2 , Yongxing Li2,3, Hui Shao2 and

Shiguang Wang2

Abstract
Recently, the environmental issue caused by logistics of agricultural products has attracted a great deal of attention. In
order to solve the problem, much of work focuses on green logistics to decrease environmental pollution. However, the
green logistics evaluation system of agricultural products is insufficient. Therefore, establishing a reasonable green logis-
tics evaluation system for agricultural products plays a key role in the development of green agricultural products. In this
work, domestic and international environmental factors which affect the development of the green logistics of agricul-
tural products are analyzed based on reduction, reuse, and recycling principle of circular economy. In addition, a series
of evaluation indicators for green logistics of agricultural products are developed. A fuzzy analytic hierarchy process
method is proposed to make a comprehensive evaluation for green logistics of agricultural products based on evaluation
indicators. The method combined analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy theory, where a fuzzy transformation operator is
introduced. The proposed method is applied for decision-maker in view of knowledge management. In order to verify
the applicability of approach, the approach is applied to green logistics of Shandong agricultural products.

Keywords
Green logistics, agricultural products, fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, decision-making

Date received: 16 September 2018; accepted: 12 November 2018

Handling Editor: ZhiWu Li

Introduction environmental pollution. Aiming at environmental pol-

lution problem, much of work focuses on green logis-
With the improvement of living standards in China, tics to decrease the environmental pollution of
there are great changes in many aspects, for instances, agricultural products. Many studies are performed on
material food and consumption structure. Consumer
demands for fresh produce, aquatic products, fruits,
1
and vegetables are increasing strongly, which increases College of Engineering and Technology, Northeast Forestry University,
Harbin, China
the vigor to develop logistics industry of agricultural 2
School of Transportation, Jilin University, Changchun, China
products. Nowadays, the growth momentum of con- 3
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological
sumer demand is strong, and the development space University, Singapore
for logistics of agricultural products is great in China.
Corresponding author:
But there are still problems, such as late starting, rela-
Yu Lin, School of Transportation, Jilin University, Changchun 130022,
tively backward technology, and imperfect industry China.
standard system, which lead to high cost and Email: linyu773@163.com

Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
(http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without
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open-access-at-sage).
2 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

green logistics of agricultural products (APGL).

Rostamzadeh and colleagues1–3 thought that green Influence factors of APGL
logistics evaluation indexes should include green pur-
chasing, green transportation, and green storage.
Ubeda and colleagues4,5 pointed out that the green
logistics system is a friendly and efficient logistics sys- Internal External
tem coordinated with the environment. Sarkis and col- factor factor
leagues6,7 argued that green marketing is a business to
determine the target market demand, more cost effec-
tive than competitors to provide customers to meet the
needs of goods. Aldakhil et al.8 put forward that, in Figure 1. Relationship between internal factor set and external
order to achieve the green development of logistics, factor set.
great efforts need to be taken in four aspects. The four
aspects are the freight strength, different modes of car-
bon consumption, vehicle utilization, and energy con-
Preservation rate of agricultural products
sumption of carbon. Bajdor and colleagues9–11
presented that green logistics is an extension of the con- Processing rate of agricultural products

cept of sustainable development and summarized the Circulation rate of agricultural products
characteristics of green logistics. Georgiana and col- Storage level of agricultural products
leagues12,13 described the logistics activities and the
Logistics transportation efficiency
resulting environmental impact based on the green
Internal
logistics and green supply chain management theory. factor
Traceability of information
Pishvaee and colleagues14,15 analyzed the uncertain fac- Energy consumption
tors of green logistics network and established the fuzzy
mathematical model. Bosona and colleagues16–18 put Waste recovery rate
forward to establish the manufacturer cluster belt, Vehicle exhaust emissions
which can reduce the waste of resources in transporta-
Green logistics technology use degree
tion and improve the efficiency of green logistics opera-
tion. Sun and colleagues18,19 thought that enterprises, Logistics cost of agricultural products
consumers, and other participants should be put into Total value of agricultural products logistics
action to develop green logistics. Rezaei and col-
leagues20–22 established the evaluation index system of Figure 2. Internal factor set.
logistics distribution performance. The fuzzy compre-
hensive evaluation method was used to evaluate the green logistics of Shandong agricultural products. The
performance of fresh agricultural products. Wu result reflected the actual situation of green logistics of
et al.23,24 analyzed the difference of combing ecological Shandong agricultural products. In view of the result,
economy, circular economy, green economy, and the some relevant policy suggestions are presented accord-
development of low-carbon economy. Tian25 pointed ing to the obtained analysis results.
out that green logistics can greatly reduce the cost of
logistics operations and proposed a highly efficient
low-cost logistics model. câu này lấy đc Evaluation index system
By analyzing the existing investigations, there are
fewer evaluation researches of APGL, especially for the The evaluation index, which is used for assessing, eval-
evaluation of logistics system in agricultural products uating, and comparing system quality, is a class of sta-
area.26–29 In this study, we analyzed the domestic and tistical index. While selecting the evaluation index of
international environmental factors that affect the APGL, the frequency analysis method and expert
development of APGL according to the reduction, consultation method are chosen to construct index
reuse, and recycling (3R) principle of circular economy set.30–32 The index set, including 27 elements, can be
and developed a series of evaluation indicators for summarized as internal factor set and external factor
APGL. A fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) set. Figure 1 shows the relationship between the inter-
method is proposed to make a comprehensive evalua- nal factor set and the external factor set. The detailed
tion for APGL based on evaluation indicators. The descriptions of indexes are shown in Figures 2 and 3.
method combined analytic hierarchy process (AHP) The above indexes highlight the characteristics of
and fuzzy theory, in which a fuzzy transformation APGL, but not all of them are concise and clear, and
operator is introduced. In order to verify the applicabil- some of them lack objectivity and operability.
ity of the evaluation system, the approach is applied to Therefore, it is necessary to optimize index system to
Ni et al. 3

plans, and so on and develop qualitative and quantita-

Perfection of relevant laws and regulations
tive analyses. AHP is applied to calculate index weights
Perfection of industry standard system
for APGL. The application process of AHP is divided
Industry standard degree into four steps, which are constructing index hierarchy,
Government support establishing judgment matrix, single-level sorting, and
Green channel for agricultural products
consistency checking. More detailed descriptions are
provided in next steps.
Overall planning and construction of agricultural
products logistics
In order to make a better evaluation, the index hier-
archy is constructed. The highest target level is the per-
Consumption of agricultural products
fection degree of the evaluation index system; the
Demand for agricultural products middle is the standard layer, that is to say, five aspects
External Consumer attitudes towards green agricultural of APGL is evaluated; and the last layer is the index
factor products layer, which is the specific evaluation index.
Quality of agricultural products logistics
By establishing the hierarchical model, the elements
practitioners of each layer can be compared (pairwise), and then, a
comparison judgment matrix can be obtained.
Education and training of industry related
knowledge Generally speaking, the form of judgment matrix is as
follows
The government's application level of logistics
information technology
BK C1 C2  Cn
Relevant facilities improvement and utilization rate C1 C11 C12  C1n
C2 C21 C22  C2n
Information sharing degree of logistics information .. .. .. .. ..
platform . . . . .
Cn Cn1 Cn2  Cnn
Figure 3. External factor set.
where BK is the upper target and Cij is the specific eva-
luation index: Cij . 0, Cij = 1/Cji (i 6¼ j), Cii = 1 (i,
make the index more precise, scientific, reasonable, and j = 1,2, ., n).
easy to operate. To do so, three steps are adopted to The decision matrix is usually transformed to numer-
determine final indexes: (1) analyzing indexes by cluster ical judgment matrix so that it can be calculated easily.
analysis and determining the layer of indexes; (2) ana- In general, the nine-point scale is adopted for compari-
lyzing each layer indexes by principal component anal- son standard of proportion scale, which is shown in
ysis method and removing the index with lower Table 1.
contribution rate; and (3) regrouping the final index by In fact, the ranking problem of AHP is equivalent to
factor analysis method. solve feature vector of the judgment matrix. The steps
Finally, an index system is constructed, which are summarized as follows:
includes three layers, that is, target layer, criteria layer,
and index layer. The meaning of the target layer is the 1. Calculating the product of each row element of
evaluation result of evaluation object. In this study, the the judgment matrix: Mi
goal is to make an evaluation of APGL about
Shandong province. The criterion layer is a set of judg- Y
n

ment criteria, which reflects the evaluation object Mi = aij , i = 1, 2, . . . , n

j=1
including political factors, economic factors, social fac-
tors, technical factors, internal management factors, 2. i
Calculating the N root mean square of Mi: W
and environmental protection.30,33–35 The index layer is
a series of specific factors based on the criterion layer. p ffiffiffiffiffiffi
i =
W n
Mi
The index hierarchical structure is shown in Figure 4.
3.  = ½W
Normalization of vector: W  2, . . . , W
 1, W  n T

FAHP Wi
Wi = P
n
The AHP, which is proposed by Saaty in the early Wj
1970s, is a hierarchical weight decision analysis j=1
method.36–38 Based on AHP, we can decompose the
 = ½W
 1, W
 2, . . . , W T
 n  is the feature vector.
elements associated with decisions into goals, criteria, where W
4 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Target layer Criterion layer Index layer

Perfection of relevant laws and regulations

Industry standard degree

Political factors Government support

Green channel for agricultural products

Overall planning and construction of APGL

Consumption of agricultural products

Economic factors Demand for agricultural products

Marketization of agricultural products

Consumer attitudes towards green

agricultural products
Social factors
Quality of agricultural products logistics
Evaluation index
system of APGL Processing rate of agricultural products
Preservation rate of agricultural products
Technical factors
Green logistics technology use degree

Traceability of information

Agricultural logistics transportation

Internal management Logistics cost of agricultural products

factors Total value of agricultural products logistics

Circulation rate of agricultural products

Vehicle exhaust emissions

Environmental
protection of APGL Waste recovery rate

Figure 4. Evaluation index system of APGL.

Table 1. Evaluation of classification table.

Ratio of factors A and B Comparison of quantized value

Factors A and B are equally important 1

Factor A is slightly more important than Factor B 3
Factor A is more important than Factor B 5
Factor A is very important compared to Factor B 7
Factor A is definitely more important than Factor B 9
AB adjacent judgment intermediate value 2, 4, 6, 8
Backward count of the upper figure is the reciprocal comparison of the two factors

4. Calculating the maximum eigenvalue of the Judgment matrices may not necessarily be consistent.
judgment matrix: lmax Thus, making a consistency checking for each judgment
matrix is needed.39 The consistency index and consis-
X
n
(AW ) tency ratio are calculated by the following formulas,
i
lmax =
nWi respectively
i=1
Ni et al. 5

Table 2. Average random consistency index.

n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
RI 0.00 0.00 0.58 0.90 1.12 1.24 1.32 1.41 1.45

lmax  n CI many types. The commonly used composition opera-

CI = ; CR = \0:10
n1 RI tors have the following four kinds
where n is the number of dimensional matrix and RI is
the average random consistency index; for the matrix
n = 1–9, the reference values are shown in Table 2.
The consistency of the judgment matrix is depended
on the value of RI. Generally, when CR is less than 0.1,
the judgment matrix meets satisfactory consistency
standards, and the result of single-level sorting is accep-
table. Otherwise, the judgment matrix will be adjusted
to achieve satisfactory consistency.

In this article, we select the fourth operator,

Comprehensive evaluation method M (  ,  ), as the calculation operator of fuzzy evalua-
tion model.
The fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method was estab-
lished to handle fuzzy information that existed in the
evaluation process of APGL. The comprehensive eva- Case study
luation method integrates the advantages of fuzzy eva-
luation and AHP.39,40 In recent years, logistics enterprises have been commit-
In this article, the comment set and factor set can be ted to the low-carbon development and achieved certain
written as results. Currently, the APGL are getting more atten-
tion. In order to better analyze the status of APGL, the
U = fU1 , U2 , . . . , Um g; V = fV1 , V2 , . . . , Vn g evaluation index system is presented. Shandong prov-
ince, as a large agricultural province, has a large popu-
where U is the factor set that is used to describe the lation, where consumers’ demands for agricultural
object to be evaluated (i.e. evaluation index) and V is products are higher. Thus, we performed our approach
the comment set that is used to describe the state of for Shandong agricultural logistics.
each factor (i.e. evaluation grade); the comment set is In this case, the evaluation system is divided into
V = {good, better, general, poor, bad}, and the corre- three layers: the target layer, T; the criterion layer, S;
sponding scoring set is {1.0, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4, 0.2} and the index layer, A. In addition, set S1 as the politi-
2 3 cal factor, S1 = {A1, A2, A3, A4, A5} = {Perfection of
Rk11 Rk12  Rk1n relevant laws and regulations, Industry standard
6 Rk21 Rk22  Rk2n 7 degree, Government support, Green channel for agri-
6 7
Rk = 6 . .. .. .. 7 cultural products, Overall planning and construction of
4 .. . . . 5
agricultural products logistics}; S2 as an economic fac-
Rkm1 Rkm2  Rkmn
tor, S2 = {A6, A7, A8} = {Consumption of agricultural
where Rk is the judgment matrix and Rkij represents the products, Demand for agricultural products,
degree of membership of the jth-level comment on the Marketization of agricultural products logistics}; S3 as
ith evaluation index of the kth unit. In this article, the a social factor, S3 = {A9, A10} = {Consumer attitudes
frequency distribution of each index in each scoring toward green agricultural products, Quality of agricul-
level is taken as the membership degree. tural products logistics practitioners}; S4 as the techni-
Using the synthesis of fuzzy matrix, we get the com- cal factor, S4 = {A11, A12, A13, A14} = {Processing rate
prehensive evaluation model B, that is of agricultural products, Preservation rate of agricul-
tural products, Utilization degree of green logistics
B = A  B = (B1 , B1 , . . . , B1 ) technology, Traceability of information}; S5 as the
internal management factor, S5 = {A15, A16, A17,
Finally, the maximum membership method is A18} = {Transportation efficiency of agricultural logis-
adopted to get the final evaluation level. Where, ‘‘*’’ is tics, Logistics cost of agricultural products, Total value
the fuzzy transformation, and the operator ‘‘*’’ has of agricultural products logistics, Circulation rate of
6 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Table 3. First-grade judgment matrix. Table 6. Second-grade judgment matrix (social factors).

T S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 Social factors, S3 Specific indicators

A9 A10
S1 1 1 3 1/3 1/5 1
S2 1 1 3 1/3 1/5 1 A9 1 3
S3 1/3 1/3 1 1/3 1/5 1/4 A10 1/3 1
S4 3 3 3 1 1/3 1
S5 5 5 5 3 1 5
S6 1 1 4 1 1/5 1

Table 7. Second-grade judgment matrix (technical factors).

Table 4. Second-grade judgment matrix (political factors).
Technical factors, S4 Specific indicators
Political factors, S1 Specific indicators A11 A12 A13 A14
A1 A2 A3 A4 A5
A11 1 1/5 1/3 1
A1 1 3 1/5 1/3 1 A12 5 1 2 3
A2 1/3 1 1/5 1/3 1 A13 3 1/2 1 2
A3 5 5 1 1 3 A14 1 1/3 1/2 1
A4 3 3 1 1 3
A5 1 1 1/3 1/3 1

Table 8. Second-grade judgment matrix (internal management

factors).
Table 5. Second-grade judgment matrix (economic factors).
Internal management factors, S5 Specific indicators
Economic factors, S2 Specific indicators
A15 A16 A17 A18
A6 A7 A8
A15 1 1/3 3 2
A6 1 1 5 A16 3 1 5 3
A7 1 1 5 A17 1/3 1/5 1 1/2
A8 1/5 1/5 1 A18 1/2 1/3 2 1

agricultural products}; and S6 as the environmental

protection of agricultural products logistics, S6 = {A19,
A20} = {Vehicle exhaust emissions, Waste recovery Table 9. Second-grade judgment matrix (environmental
rate}. protection of APGL).

Environmental protection of APGL, S6 Specific indicators

Consistency check A19 A20
Judgment matrixes were obtained based on expert con- A19 1 1
sultation and field investigation. The final results are A20 1 1
shown in Tables 3–9.
The index weight calculated by the square root trong lúc bình luận ở mục "TIÊU CHÍ" mình có thể nói về trọng số của cái này, kiểu
method is shown in Tables 10–16. In addition, the con- cái nào quan trọng trong việc đánh giá các doanh nghiệp
Table 10. First-grade index weight.
sistency test results are shown in Table 17.
W S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6

Comprehensive evaluation Weight 0.09 0.10 0.05 0.19 0.45 0.12

Some indices are difficult to get a specific value, that is,

A1 and A14. Thus, an expert investigation method is
adopted for this. In contrast, other indices are easily
described by a definite value, that is, A6 and A16. Table 11. Second-grade index weight (political factors).
Therefore, field investigation and questionnaire survey
are applied to get this. Each evaluation factor including W1 A1 A2 A3 A4 A5
political factors (R1), economic factors (R2), social fac- Weight 0.12 0.08 0.39 0.31 0.10
tor (R3), technical factor (R4), internal management
Ni et al. 7

Table 12. Second-grade index weight (economic factors). Table 14. Second-grade index weight (technical factors).

W2 A6 A7 A8 W4 A11 A12 A13 A14

Weight 0.45 0.45 0.10 Weight 0.11 0.49 0.27 0.13

Table 13. Second-grade index weight (social factors). Table 15. Second-grade index weight (internal management
factors).
W3 A9 A10
W5 A15 A16 A17 A18
Weight 0.75 0.25
Weight 0.24 0.52 0.09 0.15

factor (R5), and environmental protection of agricul-

tural products logistics (R6) can be written as follows
2 3 Table 16. Second-grade index weight (environmental
0:04 0:16 0:42 0:3 0:08 protection of APGL).
6 7
6 0:02 0:28 0:44 0:2 0:06 7
6 7 W6 A19 A20
R1 = 6
6 0:2 0:4 0:2 0:1 0:1 7,
7
6 7 Weight 0.50 0.50
4 0:32 0:3 0:22 0:08 0:08 5
0:12 0:3 0:42 0:1 0:06
2 3
0:16 0:3 0:3 0:1 0:1
6 7 Table 17. Consistency check result.
R2 = 4 0:2 0:3 0:22 0:1 0:18 5
0:3 0:3 0:26 0:08 0:06 N lmax CI RI CR Whether \0.10
 
0:24 0:3 0:3 0:1 0:6
R3 = , T 6 6.264 0.053 1.24 0.043 Yes
0:12 0:32 0:3 0:14 0:12 S1 5 5.191 0.048 1.12 0.043 Yes
2 3 S2 3 3.000 0.000 0.58 0 Yes
0:18 0:32 0:3 0:12 0:08
S3 2 2.000 0.000 0 0 Yes
6 0:12 0:3 0:3 0:18 0:1 7
6 7 S4 4 4.034 0.011 0.90 0.013 Yes
R4 = 6 7 S5 4 4.059 0.020 0.90 0.022 Yes
4 0:1 0:32 0:3 0:2 0:08 5
S6 2 2.000 0 0 0 Yes
0:08 0:3 0:4 0:18 0:04
2 3
0:06 0:3 0:3 0:2 0:1
6 0:1 0:2 0:3 0:2 0:2 7
6 7 The other evaluation vectors are shown in Table 18.
R5 = 6 7,
4 0:08 0:2 0:28 0:22 0:22 5 Let the fuzzy evaluation matrix R = (B1, B2, B3, B4,
0:1 0:3 0:3 0:16 0:14 B5, B6)T, and we can get the final evaluation result B as
 
0 0:12 0:3 0:4 0:18
R6 = X
n
0 0:1 0:3 0:32 0:28 B=W  R= (ai rij )
i=1
Based on the weight set Wi and fuzzy evaluation = (0:1118, 0:2495, 0:2820, 0:1919, 0:1644)
matrix Ri, we can easily get the fuzzy evaluation vector
by comprehensive evaluation formula Bi, which can be In this article, we know that the comment set is
written as V = {good, better, general, poor, bad}, and the corre-
sponding scoring set is {1.0, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4, 0.2}, so the
B1 = (0:12, 0:08, 0:39, 0:31, 0:10) final result of fuzzy comprehensive evaluation is shown
2 3
0:04 0:16 0:42 0:3 0:08 as follows
6 7
6 0:02 0:28 0:44 0:2 0:06 7
6 7 M = B  V = 0:5902
6
6 0:2 0:4 0:2 0:1 0:1 7
7
6 7 The values of others are shown in Table 19.
4 0:32 0:3 0:22 0:08 0:08 5
Based on the above analysis, we concluded that the
0:12 0:3 0:42 0:1 0:06
overall development level of APGL in Shandong is not
= ð0:1956, 0:3206, 0:1258, 0:1258, 0:0842Þ well. Among them, the political factor, the internal
management factor, and the environmental protection
8 Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Table 18. Result of evaluation vector. Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
Evaluation vector Value
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
B2 (0.1440, 0.3000, 0.2600, 0.0980, 0.1320) article.
B3 (0.2100, 0.3050, 0.3000, 0.1100, 0.4800)
B4 (0.1160, 0.3065, 0.3130, 0.1788, 0.0846)
B5 (0.0886, 0.2390, 0.2982, 0.1958, 0.1688) Funding
B6 (0.0000, 0.1100, 0.3000, 0.3600, 0.23) The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial sup-
port for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article: This work was supported by the Fundamental
Research Funds for the Central Universities under grant no.
Table 19. Result of fuzzy comprehensive evaluation.
2572014BB02 and the Heilong Jiang Postdoctoral Funds for
Scientific Research Initiation under grant no. LBH-Q16009.
M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6

Values 0.5947 0.6056 0.7740 0.6374 0.5708 0.4580 ORCID iDs

Yu Lin https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4866-6325
Shiguang Wang https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2094-823X
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