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

Area of Science:

• Supply Chain Management
• Food Science
• Operations Research

Background:

• Significant food losses occur in the supply chain between farm and fork.
• Growing populations and limited resources necessitate increased handling efficiency and reduced post-harvest losses.
• Optimizing warehouse management by considering product shelf life is crucial for adding value.

Purpose of the Study:

• To integrate model-based estimations of quality changes and remaining shelf life into cold chain management.
• To optimize first-expired-first-out (FEFO) strategies for perishable products.
• To enhance supply chain efficiency and minimize food waste.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing shelf-life-related performance indicators to incorporate remaining shelf life and product quality into supply chain cost functions.
• Developing and applying a combinatorial exhaustive-search algorithm for optimization.
• Estimating shelf life distances for specific product batches.

Main Results:

• A feasible optimization approach for typical commercial cold chains was demonstrated.
• The integration of shelf-life estimations into cost functions effectively guides FEFO strategies.
• The proposed model successfully incorporates product quality and remaining shelf life into logistics.

Conclusions:

• Model-based shelf-life estimation is a viable strategy for optimizing perishable food supply chains.
• FEFO cold chain management can be significantly improved by considering dynamic product quality and shelf life.
• Logistics optimization is achievable by using estimated shelf life as a guiding metric.