Management and Organization of the Real Agri-Food Supply Chain with the Cost of Waste Degradation

The supply chain of agricultural products and in particular perishable products is a critical issue in the supply chain management field due to high safety and quality risks associated with the delays in the products delivery. The supply chain of agricultural has received a great deal of attention lately due to issues related to public health. Something that has become apparent is that in the near future the design and operation of agricultural supply chains will be subject to more stringent regulations and closer monitoring, in particular those for products destined for human consumption (agrifoods). The supply chain of agri-foods, as any other supply chain, is a network of organizations working together in different processes and activities in order to bring products and services to the market, with the purpose of satisfying customers‟ demands.This work is concerned with the planning of a real agri-food supply chain for poultry products. For this concrete case we chose two products namely chicken and turkey-cock meat. More precisely the problem is to redesign the existing supply chain and to optimize the distribution planning. Furthermore, environmental costs of road transportation in terms of CO2 emissions are taken into account in the computations. The proposed integrated approach permits to minimize the total costs of the agri-food supply chain not only in terms of economy but also in terms of public health (ecology).

As mentioned in our paper, the entire problem is decomposed into two problems, and each sub problem is solved in sequential manner, to get the final solution. LINGO optimization solver (Version12.0) has been used to get the solution to the problem.