A brief literature review on decision methods analysis for 3PL selection

There has been an increasing interest in third-party logistic (3PL) evaluation and selection methods lately. Proposed methods in academic literature have significant differences, approaches and conditions to be used, yet comprehensive reference of such methods was not found. This problem is considered in this article, which main goal is to make a descriptive analysis of existing methods for evaluation and selection of 3PL providers. A classification of methods is made using characteristics commonly highlighted in academic literature. This paper is an exploratory study and main expected result is a reference of current 3PL selection and evaluation researches. Most of the analyzed methods for 3PL selection and evaluation considered a mixed between qualitative and quantitative approaches and are not based in real cases. Descriptions of which method to use in each particular situation was not found.