Inbound logistics optimization for fresh oranges with waste management

Abstract

Typical fruit supply chains include several echelons such as farms, primary fruits-processing-facilities to produce main products, secondary fruits-processing-facilities to produce by-products, distribution centers, retailers, and consumers. This paper focuses on the inbound logistics operations that cover the logistics planning for transporting the fruits collected at the farms to the primary fruit processing facilities. Fruit supply chains are considered difficult to manage due the perishable nature of fruits and time constraints to avoid contamination and wastage. The objective of this research is to optimize inbound logistics in fruit supply chains by developing an optimization model that minimizes fruit losses during transportation and identifies optimal waste management practices. This approach not only reduces waste but also lowers greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with fruit wastage. A bi-objective optimization model for the inbound logistics of fresh fruits is presented; the first objective is to minimize the total cost considering the environmental sustainability factors and the second objective is to minimize the carbon footprint and GHG emissions. Fresh fruit losses and wastage caused by changes in temperature, shelf life, and total time spent on transportation during inbound logistics is quantified. The model is applied to original data of fresh Valencia oranges harvested from farms in Egypt and computational results indicate that the fruit loss per month is decreased from 29% to less than 2% during the inbound logistics operations. Three methods are used to solve the bi-objective optimization problem, and the results are compared.