Conceptual framework for designing agri-food supply chains under uncertainty by mathematical programming models

Abstract

Agri-food sector performance strongly impacts global economy, which means that developing optimisation models to support the decision-making process in agrifood supply chains (AFSC) is necessary. These models should contemplate AFSC's inherent characteristics and sources of uncertainty to provide applicable and accurate solutions. To the best of our knowledge, there are no conceptual frameworks available to design AFSC through mathematical programming modelling while considering their inherent characteristics and sources of uncertainty, nor any there literature reviews that address such characteristics and uncertainty sources in existing AFSC design models. This paper aims to fill these gaps in the literature by proposing such a conceptual framework and state of the art. The framework can be used as a guide tool for both developing and analysing models based on mathematical programming to design AFSC. The implementation of the framework into the state of the art validates its. Finally, some literature gaps and future research lines were identified.

Modelling of sustainable food grain supply chain distribution system: a bi-objective approach

“…The transportation emissions affected by vehicle types, load of vehicles and travelled distances, emission caused due to facility establishment, holding and handling operations are also considered in the model. A comparative analysis of two meta-heuristic algorithms on the food grain supply chain problem in developing economy is also distinctive which bridges the research gap of algorithms/heuristics applications in SFSC domain (Esteso et al 2018, Zhu et al 2018, Validi et al 2015, Mohammed and Wang 2017b, Allaoui et al 2018). The influence of supply and demand uncertainty is captured through the sensitivity analysis which overlooked in the Validi et al (2014b) and Maiyar and Thakkar et al (2017) studies.…”

“…Recently, an interesting and insightful mathematical model oriented review of the extant literature focusing on Sustainable Food Supply Chain (SFSC) domain was conducted by Esteso et al (2018) and Zhu et al (2018). They clearly highlighted the need of the development of mathematical programming models to support the decision making process of FSC in developing countries.…”

“…Existing research work of Banasik et al (2019), Mohammed and Wang (2017b), Seuring (2013), Maiyar and Thakkar (2017), Brandenburg et al (2014) and Wang et al (2019) argued the growing attention of environmental impact of FSC activities along with the economic influence. New mathematical models are necessary to improve the food supply chain in developing nations by integrating sustainability, multiple time periods, integration of procurement, transportation and storage decisions (Esteso et al 2018, Zhu et al 2018. They also emphasised the integration of economic and environmental aspects and their conflicting nature and multi-objective modelling in SFSC domain.…”

How to Support Group Decision Making in Horticulture: An Approach Based on the Combination of a Centralized Mathematical Model and a Group Decision Support System

“…An increasing number of recent research works recognize the necessity of implementing collaboration mechanisms among the members of fruit and vegetable SCs for achieving sustainability [8], increase revenues and customer satisfaction and reduce the negative impact of uncertainty [9]. [10] distinguish three interrelated dimensions of collaboration: information sharing, decision synchronization, and incentive alignment.…”

“…One application can be found in the work of [15] who propose a distributed mathematical model for the coordination of perishable crop production among small farmers and a consolidation facility using auction mechanisms. Another example is the research of [9] where a collaborative mathematical model is proposed to improve farmers' skill level by investments in an uncertain context. [14] conclude in their review that studies on supply chain coordination in agri-food sector with a particular focus on small-scale farmers is very scarce.…”