Title: Fuzzy and multiobjective purchase and transportation planning for food retailing: case study in Japan

Authors: Masatoshi Sakawa; Ichiro Nishizaki; Takeshi Matsui

Addresses: Department of System Cybernetics, Graduate School of Engineering, Higashi-Hiroshima, 739-8527, Japan ' Department of System Cybernetics, Graduate School of Engineering, Higashi-Hiroshima, 739-8527, Japan ' Department of System Cybernetics, Graduate School of Engineering, Higashi-Hiroshima, 739-8527, Japan

Abstract: This paper considers purchase and transportation planning for food retailing in Japan, and formulates a linear programming problem where the profit of a food retailer is maximised. The food retailer deals with vegetables and fruits which are purchased at the central wholesale markets in several cities, and transports them by truck from each of the central wholesaler markets to the food retailer's storehouse. Having examined the optimal solution to the formulated linear programming problem, in view of the recent global warming issue, a single objective problem is reformulated as a multiobjective one. Furthermore, introducing the fuzzy goals of the decision maker, through an interactive fuzzy satisficing method, a satisficing solution for the decision maker is derived efficiently by updating the reference membership levels.

Keywords: purchasing problems; food retailing; linear programming; fuzzy programming; multiobjective programming; interactive programming; Japan; transport planning; fruit and vegetables; global warming.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMCDM.2013.053732

International Journal of Multicriteria Decision Making, 2013 Vol.3 No.2/3, pp.277 - 300

Received: 03 Jul 2012
Accepted: 09 Jan 2013
Published online: 29 Jan 2014 *

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