SUPPLY CHAIN NETWORK DESIGN WITH UNCERTAIN LEAD TIME, PRICE DISCOUNTS, AND UNCERTAIN DETERIORATION RATE

Abstract

Increased consumerism culture and wastage of food during various tiers of supply chain (including consumer end) poses serious challenges to human health as well as environmental health of the planet. The improvement in the economic and social growth along with the reduction in the total quantity deterioration needs to be addressed in a fruits supply chain. A multi-objective model is proposed in this research for designing a supply chain network for fruits. The research considers the farms, distributors, regional markets, wholesalers, and retailers while designing the network. The concept of having an uncertain lead time, price discount, uncertain deterioration rate and selling price fluctuations has also been incorporated in the model. The multi-objective model proposed in the research considers the objectives of profit maximization, quantity deterioration minimization under uncertain lead time, and social impact maximization. For avoiding unrealistic and impractical modeling and incorporating the effect of neutrality (indeterminacy) in decision making, the proposed network for fruits is also optimized using the neutrosophic optimization technique. The optimized network is also tested by considering a numerical example of a tomato supply chain. The results showed that in the profit maximization function, a major cost contribution is made by the costs incurred at the farms. Out of twenty-nine costs incurred at farms, the labor costs incurred for picking up the ripened fruits made a major contribution. Around 4467.05 kgs of tomatoes are deteriorated per hour under uncertain lead time, which needs to be managed properly to minimize the issue of quantity deterioration that eventually increases food waste globally and unfulfilled demand at the consumer end. The results also showed that the maximum number of jobs are being created at the farms during the process of picking the tomatoes that are ready to be consumed. A sensitivity analysis is also performed on some major parameters by changing them with -50%, -25%, +25%, and +50%, for a more realistic analysis and application purposes. The sensitivity analysis showed that a major change in the optimal value of profit function is created by changing the per kg selling price of tomatoes. While a major change is seen in the quantity deterioration and social impact functions by changing the uncertain lead time and the capacity of a truck used for transportation between regional markets and wholesaler, respectively. A comparative analysis has shown that neutrosophic optimization is a better approach for optimizing supply chain networks than augmented ɛ-constraint method and interactive multii-objective fuzzy programming