Search

Purpose: The single-supplier multi-retailer cold chain is a widely adopted type of supply chain in the real-world food industry. This paper aims to consider the problem of effectively designing and managing a single-supplier multi-retailer cold chain for fresh produce with deterministic demand to minimize the total cost, which includes cooling, loss of value and carbon emission costs. Design/methodology/approach: The global stability index (GSI) method and the non-Arrhenius model are integrated to describe the behavior of food quality degradation. The power-of-two (PoT) policy is adopted in determining the coordinated replenishment policies for the suppliers and retailers, and an appropriate wholesale price structure that can achieve the coordination of the chain is presented. Findings: The properties of the cold chain are uncovered, and an appropriate wholesale price scheme that achieves chain coordination with the optimal PoT decision is provided. In the numerical examples, different scenarios are investigated, and it is found that the cold chain parameters influence the optimal decisions in certain ways. Originality/value: The PoT policy – an efficient policy to determine the replenishment strategy – has not been adopted in finding the solution of a single-supplier multi-retailer cold chain in the literature. Also, no study has compared the uncoordinated and coordinated cold chain. Moreover, in the existing literature, the wholesale price is usually a constant rather than having a coordinated scheme. This research aims to fill these research gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality degradation is normally judge by monitoring independently the loss of a certain quality attribute during storage. However, the rate of degradation for each of the quality attributes present in a food product is not the same. This study focus on deterioration of vitamin C, lycopene, total phenolics and antioxidant activity of ready-to-drink pink guava juice (PGJ) during storage at elevated temperatures. Kinetic order, rate constant (k), activation energy (Ea) and temperature coefficient (Q10) of the degradation were derived by applying Arrhenius equation. The results obtained showed that freshly made PGJ contain 39.79±2.18 mg/100 mL of vitamin C, 3.17±0.27 mg/L of lycopene, 28.08±4.11 mgGAE/100 mL of total phenolic content (TPC) and 13.20±1.91 mMTE/100 mL of ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP). All quality attributes measured in this study showed zero-order kinetic reaction. The results also showed that FRAP has the highest Ea of 49.52 KJ/mol and Q10 of 1.80, followed by vitamin C (Ea=41.49 KJ/mol; Q10=1.64), lycopene (Ea=31.75 KJ/mol; Q10=1.46), and lastly TPC (Ea=14.11 KJ/mol; Q10=1.18). The predicted total depletion of each quality attribute at refrigerated storage (5°C) were 266 days for antioxidant activity, 158 days for vitamin C and lycopene, and 63 days for total phenolics. This study provide useful information on the degradation rate and availability of health beneficial and bioactive compounds present in fruit juice beverage during storage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The food quality has always played an important role in the retail process since it has been considered as a direct factor to influence a consumer's purchase decision. In this paper, we formulate an inventory model for perishable foods, in which the demand depends on the price and quality that decays continuously. The objective is to determine a joint dynamic pricing and preservation technology investment strategy while maximizing the total profit from selling a given initial inventory of foods. We first prove the existence of an optimal solution based on Filippov-Cesari theorem. Then, we obtain all the candidates and provide the conditions that make a certain candidate be an optimal solution according to Pontryagin's maximum principle. Next, we present an effective algorithm to search for the optimal strategy. Finally, two numerical examples are employed to illustrate the solution procedure and the results, followed by sensitivity analysis and managerial insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]