RESEARCH ON THE ECOLOGICAL CORRELATION

ANALYSIS BETWEEN THE ENTERPRISES

IN THE LOGISTICS PARK

Honglu Liu

School of Traffic and Transportation, Beijing Jiaotong University, 100044 Beijing, P. R. China,

Xiaolan Guan, Zhenji Zhang

School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University, 100044 Beijing, P. R. China,

Keywords: Logistics park, Correlation analysis, Ecosystem.

Abstract: This paper innovatively introduces the correlation analysis in the theory of ecosystem into the relationship

analysis between the enterprises in the logistics park and has opened up a new brand-path to describe the

complicated relationships between the enterprises. Through constructing a correlation analysis model, we

can measure the reasonability of the enterprises distribution and understand the enterprise's core business

and the integration of resources within the park more systematically and effectively, and also provide new

ideas and new methods to guide the building of ecological logistics park in the future.

1 INTRODUCTION

Recently, the Brocade IT Logistics Supply Chain

Management Research Center released the logistics

research report of the second quarter in 2009, in

which the statistical data of the logistics park are

striking. Compared with the same period of last year,

the construction rate of logistics park that has been

started increases by 14 percent, while the idle rate of

the logistics park has dropped to 60 percent

dramatically at the same time. The direct market

customers of the park or the other major enterprises

attracted to the park include the transportation

enterprises, logistics service providers and logistics-

intensive industrial and commercial enterprises.

These enterprises and entities can be divided into

eight categories, including logistics enterprises,

freight forwarding enterprises, commercial

enterprises, manufacturing enterprises,

transportation enterprises, courier enterprises, banks

and other service agencies and others. However,

from the perspective of the operation of our national

logistics parks, the largest proportion of the

enterprises settled down in the park is the logistics-

intensive commercial enterprises and it has reached

50 percent, while the proportions of other enterprises

that are closely related to the logistics, such as the

logistics enterprises, freight forwarding enterprises,

transportation enterprises, and courier enterprises are

relatively very small. The majority of main business

income of many logistics parks comes from the

following four aspects, including the warehouse and

yard rent, facilities rent and management fees,

property management fees and office building rent

Only a handful of logistics parks can make profit

from the value-added services, such as the logistics

information services, warehousing and distribution,

etc. Even more puzzling, there are a few logistics

park's profits come from the state funding, tax

incentives and land rent or sales after revaluation. In

short, the structure of China's logistics park system

is irrational, and there is no relationships between

the enterprises that only operate for their own

business, or loosely connected. And there is even

redundant construction, waste of resources, vicious

competition between the enterprises due to

homogenization, and other issues that obstruct the

sound development of the logistics park seriously.

In order to describe and analyze these issues

more effectively, this paper innovatively introduces

the correlation analysis in the theory of ecosystem

into the relationship analysis between the enterprises

193

Guan X., Liu H. and Zhang Z.

RESEARCH ON THE ECOLOGICAL CORRELATION ANALYSIS BETWEEN THE ENTERPRISES IN THE LOGISTICS PARK.

DOI: 10.5220/0003268201930198

In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations (ICISO 2010), page

ISBN: 978-989-8425-26-3

in the logistics park based on the ecological

characteristics of the logistics park and uses the

mathematical method to measure the reasonality of

the enterprise distribution within the park

quantitatively and systematically, and thus to

understand the enterprise's core business and the

integration of resources more effectively.

2 ECOLOGICAL

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE

LOGISTICS PARK

The differences in the possession of resources on

core business between the enterprises and reasonable

convergence of business processes are the

foundation of stable development for the whole

logistics park. The differentiation of core business

between the enterprises is the prerequisite of the

stability of the park, since that there is often fierce

competition for resources after the introduction of

some enterprises with similar business, and also lead

to the exit and migration of some enterprises. At the

same time, the reasonable convergence of business

processes is the guarantee of coordinated operation

of the park, because that it requires the cooperation

of many enterprises and entities to fulfill a complete

logistics process, such as the various specific steps

from the entrance, warehousing, distribution,

delivery, out of the park to transport, as well as the

integration of services, power, policy, management

and other related facilities. As to these two aspects,

one is the vertical possession of resource, and the

other is the horizontal integration of information

flow, capital flow and logistics flow. They built up a

complex and stable operational system together.

We can find that there is a special similarity

between the logistics park and the ecological system

by comparison. For example, the difference of

resource possession for the enterprise is similar to

the difference of niche for the biology, and the

business process is similar to the food chain.

Therefore, we can consider the logistics park as an

ecosystem and consider every kind of enterprises in

the park as one kind of species in the ecosystem. For

example, the warehousing enterprises, transportation

enterprises, semi finished products processing

enterprises and service enterprises are all the species

in the system. The enterprises have to find their own

niche if they want to maintain stability and promote

their own development, otherwise there will be

vicious competition between the enterprises, which

just like the niche overlap between the species. We

have to build a reasonable food chain, or namely the

business cooperation process on the basis of suitable

niche, otherwise there would be the food chain

fracture and lead to the withdrawal of enterprises

and even the collapse of the whole system.

The ecological regions of the logistics park refer

to the three-dimensional location of time, space and

market and the functional position of the market.

The enterprise’s occupation to the niche can be

called the separation and coexistence relationship of

niche, that is to say, the noncompetitive relationship

between the enterprises for the resources on the

basis of proximity and separation of the enterprises’

niche, and all these different niche possessions of the

enterprises constitute the entire possession of

internal resources in the logistics park. In this paper,

this kind of extent and intensity for the possession of

such resources can be measured through the

correlation degree between the enterprises’ niches in

the park. Specifically, this paper considers all the

functions and services involved in the logistics park

as the total resources of the whole park, and every

enterprise within the park occupies a part of the total

resources. If the collection of all the enterprises’

possessions of resources equals to the total resources

of the park, then we can say that the system structure

of this logistics park is reasonable and efficient;

otherwise, according to the correlation analysis, we

can understand the ecology degree of the logistics

park more clearly and thus make adjustments to the

logistics park accordingly.

3 ECOLOGICAL CORRELATION

ANALYSIS MODEL

This paper constructs the correlation analysis model

between the enterprises within the logistics park

based on the theory of food chain among biological

communities in ecology.

3.1 Calculation Formula of Correlation

The biological communities’ correlation refers to the

measurement to the correlation between the species

in a biological community. It equals to the ratio of

the actual food chain number observed in the

communities’ food net to the largest food chain

number, shown as the following:

()

−

(1)

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Here, C refers to the correlation between the

biological communities, which is also the correlation

between the enterprises in the logistics park;

refers to the richness of species, which is also the

potential richness of the correlation between the

enterprises in the park, that is to say the saturated

state of the correlation;

refers to the actual

observed number of food chain contained in the food

net, which is also the real correlation between the

enterprises within the park.

The parameters of the ecological correlation

between the enterprises within the park can be

divided into the following categories:

1C = , shows that the correlation has reached

saturation, and this is also the ideal operation state of

the logistics park.

0.5 1C<<, shows that the correlation between

the enterprises within the park has reached a certain

rate, and this is also a good operation state of the

logistics park.

0.5C < , shows that there is a serious lack of

coordination in the possession and utilization of

resources between the enterprises in the internal

logistics park. There are relationships of overlap,

cross-ties and mutually inclusive between the

enterprises’ niches, and these relationships will

directly lead to unreasonable competition between

the enterprises in the logistics park. The business

was chaotic and this is the most unsatisfactory

operation state and need to improve.

3.2 Parameters Solving Method

In order to get the parameters in the above formula,

we can use a chart or matrix to demonstrate the

relationships between the enterprises. When there is

a small number of species and the relationships

between the enterprises are simple, we can draw the

connection diagram. In order to facilitate

understanding, we have adopted the chart for

analysis. Figure 1 explains the real biological

communities’ correlation between the enterprises in

the logistics park which is marked with solid lines,

while the dotted lines indicate the potential

correlation between all the enterprises within the

park.

Here, the connection between two points

indicates that there is complementary and

Figure 1: The correlation between the enterprises in the

logistics park.

interdependent relationship between the enterprises,

rather than competitive relationship. There is no

doubt that it is an ideal situation when there are

complementary relationships between the core

businesses of all the enterprises. It shows that there

is business relevance with others for every enterprise

in the park, and there is no competitive relationship

on the business. The species richness in Figure 1

is 6S

. The number ‘1’ in the matrix indicates that

there are complementary relationship between the

enterprises in the park; while if there is no

relationship between two enterprises, we will use the

number ‘0’. Thus, the food chain of this matrix for

Figure 1 is 6L

4 APPLICATIONS

4.1 Model Calculation

We take a logistics park that engaged in the

international goods trade to apply the model. In

order to simplify the calculation process, we

intercept a particular logistics process of certain

goods exports to carry out the application. There are

six entities in this process (including the enterprises

and administrative departments), and the specific

process is as follows: the foreign trade enterprise

purchase a batch of merchandise for export sales

from the manufacturing enterprise

a , and it also

contacts with the warehousing enterprise

b to

provide it storage and short-distance transport

services, and

b and d have to go to the

administrative department

to deal with the

relevant export procedures. The manufacturing

enterprise

a has to contact with the deep-processing

enterprise

e to segment and package the goods

RESEARCH ON THE ECOLOGICAL CORRELATION ANALYSIS BETWEEN THE ENTERPRISES IN THE

LOGISTICS PARK

195

before export, and then transfer to the ocean

shipping enterprise

c that engaged in the

international goods transport and take goods from

the warehouse of warehousing enterprise

b and

complete the entire process that the goods in the

logistics park.

We use different letters , , , , ,

abcde fto represent

all the enterprises with different core business, and

then draw the diagram shown as Figure 2.

It is inconvenient to demonstrate with diagrams

when there are too many enterprise species in the

park, and then we can use the matrix, shown as

Figure 3. The top of the matrix indicates the

enterprises that need the service resources, and the

left of the matrix indicates the enterprises that

provide the service resources. The richness of the

enterprise species in this application is 6

. The

number ‘1’ in the matrix indicates that there are

complementary relationship between the enterprises

in the park; while if there is no relationship between

two enterprises, we use the number ‘0’. Thus, for

this application, the food chain of this matrix

is 7

L = .

Figure 2(a)

Figure 2(b)

Figure 2: The real correlation and the potential correlation.

−

01110

00001

10011

10010

10110

01100

fedcbaA

Figure 3: The correlation matrix between the enterprises in

the logistics park.

The potential correlation within the logistics park

(

)

(

)

1661

SS−−

. Take 7L = and

into (1) and then we can get the ecological

correlation between the enterprises of this logistics

park.

() ()

0.47

1661

==≈

−−

4.2 Result Analysis

According to the result 0.47C

≈

, we can consider

that the correlation between the enterprises in this

logistics park is relatively very weak. From the

perspective of Figure 2, the enterprise e in this park

is the weakest one, which has only one business

relationship with enterprise a . That is to say, it can

only provide services for enterprise a in the whole

park and this is unreasonable for the ecological

logistics park. On the one hand, the enterprise e has

to provide service for enterprise a , but also only this

one enterprise; on the other hand, the resources of

enterprise e are not fully utilized, while the other

enterprises don’t need the service of enterprise e or

to provide it services. So the enterprise e has to find

a way out and exit the park to develop and pursue

other interests, or to engage in other completely

irrelevant business in order to seek to survive, but

this will inevitably lead to the food chain fracture the

of the logistics park. There is only operational

complementary relationship between the enterprise

a and

with the other two enterprises, while the

enterprise b , d and

also have only achieved

operational complementary relationships with the

other three enterprises. This kind of network

relationships with mutually use of resources or the

complementary relationships between the enterprises

business is still very inadequate.

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Here, we consider the relationship between the

enterprise a and e as the relationship between two

different niches. That is to say, their businesses are

not overlapping in this logistics park, and there is a

collection of niche space due to the logistics in this

ecological logistics park. Both of from the enterprise

a to e and from the enterprise e to a are the

possessions of different niches. We can assume that

the total number of niche correlation in this logistics

park is

*6 30NS==

based on Figure 2 (equal to

the number of species in the park multiply with the

total number of connections with the other enterprise

species). From Figure 2, we can get the specific

niche correlation that has been used in the logistics

park, which is represented as

. So there are

2*7 14

M ==

niche correlations. The number of

specific ecological niche correlation of Figure 2 is

shown as Table 1.

According to Table 1, we can calculate the

occupation rate of the internal enterprises to the

niche in the logistics park, and this rate equals to the

real niche correlation occupied by the enterprise

species to the total correlation under the saturated

state. They are shown as the following.

230 0.067a =≈

;

330 0.1b ==

;

230 0.067c =≈

;

330 0.1d ==

;

130 0.033e =≈

;

330 0.1f ==

The total rate is just 0.47

C ≈ .

Table 1: The distribution of the enterprise niche

correlation within the logistics park.

Enterprises

Number

Real enterprise niche

correlation in practice

(

)

2 3 2 3 1 3 14

Ideal enterprise niche

correlation under the

saturated state (

N )

5 5 5 5 5 5 30

others

Figure 4: The pie chart of the enterprise niche occupation

within the logistics park.

In order to facilitate understanding, we use a pie

chart to demonstrate the distribution proportion of

the enterprise species in this logistics park and the

niche resources that they occupied, shown as Figure

In Figure 4, the region of ‘others’ indicates that

there are niches that have not been occupied and

used by the enterprises in this logistics park, and the

park has to borrow related businesses and functions

from other areas to cover this vacancy of core

business. However, it will result in two

disadvantages in this way. On the one hand, it will

affect the realization of economic effects in the park

because of its own imperfect core business within

the park and has to use other non-park enterprises to

compensate for this part of the vacancies. On the

other hand, it will also result in waste of resources

due to the inefficient utilization of the facilities and

equipments within the park. It is clear that the

vacancy rate of this park is very serious, and the

degree of ecology is not enough. There is still a long

way to meet the requirements of ecological logistics

park through the analysis.

According to the correlation analysis and

combined with Figure 4, we can draw such a

conclusion that there are the following five issues in

this logistics park:

(1) It lacks of complementarities between the

enterprises within the park and there is not a

reasonable planning to introduce enterprises into the

park.

(2) The efficiency of the resource utilization is

not high, and there is the phenomenon of resource

idle and waste.

(3) The ecology degree of this park is not enough,

and it has not realized the real sense of core business

integration between the logistics-related enterprises.

(4) There are enterprises whose core business is

not logistics-related, such as some commercial

enterprises.

The existence of these irrational issues affects

the normal business dealings directly within the

logistics park and often results in some unnecessary

RESEARCH ON THE ECOLOGICAL CORRELATION ANALYSIS BETWEEN THE ENTERPRISES IN THE

LOGISTICS PARK

197

phenomenon, such as the operation confusion,

disordered competition and so on, and thus lost the

original purpose of building the logistics park, as

well as the role to promote the development of the

logistics industry that it should take on and play.

5 CONCLUSIONS

This paper introduces the correlation analysis in the

theory of ecosystem into the relationship analysis

between the enterprises in the logistics park

innovatively and has opened up a new brand-path to

describe the complicated relationships between the

enterprises. It measures the enterprise correlation

quantitatively through constructing the correlation

analysis model and targets specific issues in the park.

However, since this method is constructed based on

some simplified assumptions and it just uses the

binary parameters to describe the relationships

between the enterprises, we can make the parameters

more complicated in the future research in order to

describe the logistics park more realistically.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is partially supported by the Philosophy

and Social Science Funds of Beijing

(No.09BeZH128) and the Science and Technology

Innovation Funds of Beijing Jiaotong University for

outstanding Ph.Ds (No.141101522).

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