Abstract

In traditional Indian agro-fresh food supply chain (AFSC), authors identify the following four shortcomings through the literature survey: (1) unorganized supply chain structure; (2) low profitability of farmers; (3) high wastage of agricultural products; and (4) a large number of small-farm-holding farmers. According to the fourth shortcoming, 85% of farmers have less than 2 hectares of farming land, and these farmers transport their products independently into the market to sell. Owing to this, a higher transportation cost is incurred in traditional AFSC, which leads to low profit for farmers. To overcome these shortcomings, authors propose aggregation of products by forming clusters of farmers and its transportation from these cluster centers to market. This paper formulates multi-period, multi-product, mixed-integer nonlinear programming model to design a four-echelon supply chain with considering the clustering of farmers and perishability of products. A real case study problem of Mandsaur District (India) of vegetable distribution is solved in LINGO 17.0 to check the validity of the formulated model. The results revealed that 85% of the total distribution cost incurred in the transportation of products from farmers to the market. Hence, the major focus should be to design an efficient transportation plan for the minimization of transportation cost from farmers to the market. Further, sensitivity analysis shows that the proposed model is robust and sensitive to changes in maximum distance traveled by a farmer to reach a cluster center and number of hubs to be opened, respectively.

Graphic abstract

中文翻译：

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重组印度的农副食品供应链网络：数学模型制定

摘要

在传统的印度农副食品供应链中，作者通过文献调查发现了以下四个缺点：（1）无组织的供应链结构；（2）农民的盈利能力低下；（3）农产品浪费严重；（4）大量的小农户。根据第四个缺点，有85％的农民拥有不到2公顷的耕地，这些农民将其产品独立运输到市场上出售。因此，传统的AFSC运输成本较高，导致农民的利润较低。为了克服这些缺点，作者建议通过形成农民集群及其从这些集群中心到市场的运输来聚集产品。本文制定了多周期，多产品，考虑农民集群和产品易腐性的混合整数非线性规划模型，设计四级供应链。在LINGO 17.0中解决了印度Mandsaur区蔬菜配送的真实案例研究问题，以检验所建立模型的有效性。结果表明，总分销成本的85％发生在从农民到市场的产品运输中。因此，主要重点应该是设计有效的运输计划，以最大程度地减少从农民到市场的运输成本。此外，敏感性分析表明，所提出的模型是健壮的，并且对农民到达集群中心的最大距离变化和要打开的集线器数量敏感。

图形摘要