The impact of food perishability issues in the vehicle routing problem

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2014

Authors

Pedro Amorim (Author) FEUP; Bernardo Almada Lobo (Author) FEUP

Journal

Title: Computers and Industrial Engineering

Vol. 67

Pages: 223-233

ISSN: 0360-8352

Publisher: Elsevier

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 60 Citations

ISI Web of Science

Scopus - 100 Citations

Scientific classification

FOS: Engineering and technology

CORDIS: Technological sciences

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-008-Z5E

DOI: 10.1016/j.cie.2013.11.006

Resumo (PT): Highly perishable food products can lose an important part of their value in the distribution process. We propose a novel multi-objective model that decouples the minimization of the distribution costs from the maximization of the freshness state of the delivered products. The main objective of the work is to examine the relation between distribution scenarios and the cost-freshness trade-off. Small size instances adapted from the vehicle routing problem with time windows are solved with an E-constraint method and for large size instances a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm is implemented. The computational experiments show the conflicting nature of the two objectives.

Abstract (EN): Highly perishable food products can lose an important part of their value in the distribution process. We propose a novel multi-objective model that decouples the minimization of the distribution costs from the maximization of the freshness state of the delivered products. The main objective of the work is to examine the relation between distribution scenarios and the cost-freshness trade-off. Small size instances adapted from the vehicle routing problem with time windows are solved with an epsilon-constraint method and for large size instances a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm is implemented. The computational experiments show the conflicting nature of the two objectives.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 11