Companies can perform their freight distribution in three different ways. The first concept, the in-house concept, represents the use of a company’s own resources and knowledge to organize transportation from the production to retailers or from the warehouse to customers. The opposite concept is to outsource distribution activities by hiring third-party logistics providers. The third concept represents a combination of the previous two. Although the arguments in favor of outsourcing can be found in the literature, an appropriate selection of a freight distribution concept is specific for each company and depends on many evaluation criteria and their symmetrical roles. This paper presents a methodology that can be used by companies that need to choose their freight distribution concept. An advanced extension of the Additive Ratio ASsessment (ARAS) method is developed to solve the freight distribution concept selection problem. To illustrate the implementation of the proposed methodology, a tire manufacturing company from the Czech Republic is taken as a case study. However, the proposed picture fuzzy ARAS method is general and can be used by any other company. To validate the novel picture fuzzy ARAS method, a comparative analysis with the nine existing state-of-the-art picture fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making methods is provided.

The selection of a third-party logistics (3PL) provider is an important and demanding task for many companies and organizations dealing with distribution activities. To assist in decision making, this paper proposes the implementation of fuzzy logic. To design a fuzzy inference system (FIS), the first prerequisite is to determine a set of evaluation criteria and sub-criteria and to find the relationship between them. This task was solved by an extensive review of the literature and expert opinions on implementing the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach. The results obtained in the first part of the research, together with data collected from 20 3PL providers, were further used in the second part, which was related to the implementation of the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method. Finally, a decision-making tool for 3PL provider selection was designed as an FIS structure, where the inputs were the previously defined criteria and the output was a preference for 3PL selection. The fuzzy rules were generated on the basis of the collected empirical data, the preferences obtained by the TOPSIS method, and expert opinion using the Wang–Mendel method. The proposed fuzzy model is particularly suitable when input data are not crisp values but are provided descriptively through linguistic statements.

Creating an effective marketing strategy according to current trends is a key process needed to achieve sustainable growth that can result in attracting a great number of existing as well as potential customers. Moreover, an enterprise’s success is affected by the aforementioned process. The aim of the paper is to determine the clusters of small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the Slovak Republic and the use of marketing communication tools in the future. The research into marketing communications and customer relationship management (CRM) building in companies was carried out in Slovakia in the years 2017 and 2018. In total, 1,009 small and medium-sized enterprises from Slovakia participated in the research. Following a K-means clustering algorithm, three clusters were determined. Descriptive statistics, cluster analysis using K-means clustering, and an analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to identify no statistically significant difference in terms of the size of enterprises.

Third-party logistics (3PL) is becoming more and more popular because of globalization, e-commerce development, and increasing customer demand. More and more companies are trying to move away from their own account transportation to third-party accounts. One reason for using 3PLs is that the company can focus more on its core activities, while the 3PL service provider can provide distribution activities in a more professional way, save costs and time, and increase the level of customer satisfaction. An emerging issue for companies in the logistics industry is how they can decide on the 3PL evaluation and selection process for outsourcing activities. For the first time, the entropy and the criteria importance through intercriteria correlation (CRITIC) methods were coupled in order to obtain hybrid criteria weights that are of huge importance to decide on the 3PL provider evaluation and selection process. The obtained criteria weights were further utilized within the additive ratio assessment (ARAS) method to rank the alternatives from the best to the worst. The introduced hybrid–ARAS approach can be highly beneficial, since combining two methods gives more robust solutions on one hand, while on the other hand eliminating subjectivity. Comparative and sensitivity analyses showed the high reliability of the proposed hybrid–ARAS method. A hypothetical case study is presented to illustrate the potentials and applicability of the hybrid–ARAS method. The results showed that 3PL-2 was the best possible solution for our case.

In today’s business world, there are two very important health issues that the employees in the service sector are faced with: Spinal disease, especially in the lower back, and carpal tunnel syndrome. These are well-known musculoskeletal disorders. To preserve the health of its employees and prevent professional illnesses, and to thus maximize their efficiency, companies must use knowledge from the field of ergonomics. This study aims to examine the work-related health problems that the workers in transportation companies are faced with. As a case study, a postal company from Serbia is considered, with particular attention paid to the counter clerks. The research was carried out in one branch of the postal operator. All six postal clerks working at the considered branch were subjects of the study. The workers were observed visually by the researchers and recorded while performing their job tasks. Based on the analysis of their movements and body positions, the evaluation of their level of risk exposure was determined using the Ergo Fellow software, specifically with five packages within this program (Rapid Upper Limb Assessment, Rapid Entire Body Assessment, Ovako working posture analysis system, Moore and Garg, and Suzanne Rodgers). As a result of the implemented tools, the analysts are in a position to conclude what should be changed in the work organization.

Summary. This article addresses the study related to forecasting with an actual high-speed decision making under careful modelling of time series data. The study uses data-mining modelling for algorithmic optimization of transport goals. Our finding brings to the future adequate techniques for the fitting of a prediction model. This model