Collecting and Delivering Fattened Pigs to the Abattoir

In the context of pig farming, this paper addresses the optimization problem of collecting fattened pigs from farms to deliver them to the abattoir. Assuming that the pig sector is organized as a competitive supply chain with narrow profit margins, our aim is to apply analytics to cope with the uncertainty in production costs and revenues. Motivated by a real-life case, the paper analyzes a rich Team Orienteering Problem (TOP) with a homogeneous fleet, stochastic demands, and maximum workload. After describing the problem and reviewing the related literature, we introduce the PJS heuristic. Our approach is first compared with exact methods, which are revealed as computationally unfeasible. Later, a scenario analysis based on a real instance was performed to gain insight into the practical aspects. Our findings demonstrate a positive correlation between the number of alternative routes explored, the number of trips, the transportation cost, and the maximum reward. Regarding the variability in the number of pigs to collect, when a truck can visit more than one farm, better solutions can be found with higher variability since the load can be combined more efficiently.