Track: Sustainability in Supply Chains and Operations

Abstract

Agri-food supply chain (ASC) topic has attracted a lot of academics and practitioners in the last decade due to the globally increasing concern of public health and food safety and quality. Fresh produce has special characteristics, which includes perishability, uncertainty of supply and demand, and CO_2eq emissions produced throughout supply chain due to cooling, transportation, and disposal of fresh produce. These factors impose an additional complexity while managing this type of supply chains. This work concentrates on developing a simulation model of a two-echelon real life supply chain. The objective is to study the effect of changing order quantity under uncertain demand and lead time on a set of economic, social and environmental performance measures. Although, in a business environment economic dimension continues to be a top priority, simulation results showed that there is no contradiction between all three dimensions of sustainability. It minimized food wastage, offering higher quality fresh produce, lower emissions; while maintaining highest profit and an acceptable service level.