Title: Cold supply chain network for the agricultural products

Authors: Vishal A. Bhosale; Saurabh Patil; Aniket Mandlik; Harshal Motghare

Addresses: School of Mechanical Engineering, MIT Academy of Engineering, Pune-412105, India ' School of Mechanical Engineering, MIT Academy of Engineering, Pune-412105, India ' School of Mechanical Engineering, MIT Academy of Engineering, Pune-412105, India ' School of Mechanical Engineering, MIT Academy of Engineering, Pune-412105, India

Abstract: Fruits and vegetables are an essential part of day-to-day life. The cold supply chain plays a vital role in effective transportation for delivering agricultural products from farms to customers. These products require specific temperature and humidity conditions. Maintaining these conditions is a challenging task. This research focuses on optimising the cold supply chain for agricultural products and minimising the cost of delivering the products. A cold supply chain requires an organised network of farmers, packaging centres, distribution centres and transport vehicles. The theoretical model proposed in this paper is based on an analysis of the literature survey. Constraints in the mathematical model are related to demand and supply constraints, the capacity of packaging centres, the capacity of vehicles, and storage temperature. This study proposes a mathematical model and theoretical framework to minimise the costs in the cold supply chain. The created approach will enable enterprises that carry agricultural products to create optimal routes, more fresh products, minimum transportation cost and minimum transportation time.

Keywords: relative humidity; storage life; travelling salesman problem.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSCIM.2024.140211

International Journal of Supply Chain and Inventory Management, 2024 Vol.5 No.1, pp.1 - 12

Accepted: 14 Jul 2023
Published online: 30 Jul 2024 *

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