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Full-Text Articles in Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering
Scheduling Food Bank Collections And Deliveries To Ensure Food Safety And Improve Access, Lauren Davis, Irem Sengul, Julie Ivy, Luther Brock, Lastella Miles
Scheduling Food Bank Collections And Deliveries To Ensure Food Safety And Improve Access, Lauren Davis, Irem Sengul, Julie Ivy, Luther Brock, Lastella Miles
Dr. Lauren B Davis
Food banks are privately-owned non-profit organizations responsible for the receipt, processing, storage, and distribution of food items to charitable agencies. These charitable agencies in turn distribute food to individuals at risk of hunger. Food banks receive donated food from national and local sources, such as The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and supermarkets. Local sources with frequent high-volume donations justify the use of food bank vehicles for collection. Food bank vehicles are also used to deliver food to rural charitable agencies that are located beyond a distance safe for perishable food to travel without spoilage. Due to limited funds, food …
Inventory Planning And Coordination In Disaster Relief Efforts, Lauren Davis, Funda Samanlioglu, Xiuli Qu, Sarah Root
Inventory Planning And Coordination In Disaster Relief Efforts, Lauren Davis, Funda Samanlioglu, Xiuli Qu, Sarah Root
Dr. Lauren B Davis
This research proposes a stochastic programming model to determine how supplies should be positioned and distributed among a network of cooperative warehouses. The model incorporates constraints that enforce equity in service while also considering traffic congestion resulting from possible evacuation behavior and time constraints for providing effective response. We make use of short-term information (e.g., hurricane forecasts) to more effectively preposition supplies in preparation for their distribution at an operational level. Through an extensive computational study, we characterize the conditions under which prepositioning is beneficial, as well as discuss the relationship between inventory placement, capacity and coordination within the network.