An Operational Planning Model to Support First Mile Logistics for Small Fresh-Produce Growers
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Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Abstract
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<p>In this work, we propose a hierarchical optimization model to support harvest and local routing decisions of fresh agricultural products. The proposed model has been motivated by the fact that small growers of fresh produce very often face difficulties in terms of availability of local (or first-mile) logistics at reasonable prices which results in lower profit margins and more food waste. So, in order to reduce the cost of first-mile logistics they can co-ordinate the consolidation of the harvests from different growers to send their products to the packing facility. Hence, we integrate harvesting and routing operations for a set of small growers with the aim to reduce their operational costs. The proposed framework has been implemented and preliminary evaluated with some instances considering as case study farmers of fresh produce in the central region of Chile.</p>
Keywords
First mile logistics, Harvesting and distribution planning, Small fresh-produce growers