Analysis and Application of Multi-stage Logistics System in Tobacco Distribution Center

The analysis and forecast of operational efficiency of overall logistics system and each logistics stage are necessary for a tobacco distribution center (Tobacco DC) not only when it is in designing but also in production planning, however, these tasks are not achievable by using conventional efficiency estimating methods, including empirical evaluation and analog simulation in practical application. Therefore, continuous Markov chain model and its three-stage approximate analysis model were developed by analyzing a number of periodic activities of the logistics system, which could estimate the efficiency of Tobacco DC more accurately on the premise of explicitly understanding the probability distribution of operational period at each logistics stage. Taking a large-scale tobacco DC as an example, approximate Markov chain model of a three-stage logistics system was applied and verified, and its reliability and accuracy were evaluated by comparing its analysis indexes with statistics data. It indicated that, the absolute error of the model was about 5%.