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Shelf life modelling for first-expired-first-out warehouse management

2014; Royal Society; Volume: 372; Issue: 2017 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1098/rsta.2013.0306

1471-2962

Maarten Hertog, Ismail Uysal, Ultan McCarthy, Bert M. Verlinden, Bart Nicolaı̈,

Food Waste Reduction and Sustainability

In the supply chain of perishable food products, large losses are incurred between farm and fork. Given the limited land resources and an ever-growing population, the food supply chain is faced with the challenge of increasing its handling efficiency and minimizing post-harvest food losses. Huge value can be added by optimizing warehouse management systems, taking into account the estimated remaining shelf life of the product, and matching it to the requirements of the subsequent part of the handling chain. This contribution focuses on how model approaches estimating quality changes and remaining shelf life can be combined in optimizing first-expired-first-out cold chain management strategies for perishable products. To this end, shelf-life-related performance indicators are used to introduce remaining shelf life and product quality in the cost function when optimizing the supply chain. A combinatorial exhaustive-search algorithm is shown to be feasible as the complexity of the optimization problem is sufficiently low for the size and properties of a typical commercial cold chain. The estimated shelf life distances for a particular batch can thus be taken as a guide to optimize logistics.