Title: The influence of shelf life on the integrated production scheduling and vehicle routing optimisation for perishable products

Authors: Hercules Tadeu Asato Dantas; Roberto Fernandes Tavares Neto; Juliana Keiko Sagawa

Addresses: Departamento de Engenharia de Produção, Universidade Federal de São Carlos – UFSCar, São Carlos, SP, Brazil ' Departamento de Engenharia de Produção, Universidade Federal de São Carlos – UFSCar, São Carlos, SP, Brazil ' Departamento de Engenharia de Produção, Universidade Federal de São Carlos – UFSCar, São Carlos, SP, Brazil

Abstract: Prior studies on integrating production and distribution optimisation highlight the benefits of such an approach. However, no studies regarding standardised metrics for categorising shelf life lengths in different scenarios were found. Moreover, the current literature does not address the change of behaviour on solving strategies accordingly to different shelf life profiles. To address these gaps, this research proposes the normalised shelf life metric to classify long and short shelf life products. Additionally, we present a simplified optimisation formulation for the integrated production scheduling and vehicle routing problem. By evaluating three solution methods (MILP model, genetic algorithm, and logic-based Benders decomposition model), our findings reveal that shelf life significantly affects solution performance. These results emphasise the need for research focused on solution methods tailored specifically for short shelf life products. [Received: 26 July 2022; Accepted: 7 June 2023]

Keywords: shelf life; production-distribution integration; perishable products; genetic algorithm.

DOI: 10.1504/EJIE.2024.141732

European Journal of Industrial Engineering, 2024 Vol.18 No.6, pp.860 - 884

Received: 26 Jul 2022
Accepted: 07 Jun 2023
Published online: 01 Oct 2024 *