Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

A Lagrangian-Based Heuristic To Consolidate Perishable Products, Samir Babu Bhetwal

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

A consolidation center with multiple suppliers and multiple destinations for a perishable product is considered in this research. Perishable products deteriorate with time and this research includes a deterioration cost to measure this behavior. The model considers a variety of suppliers ranging from small to mid-sized. Due to dependencies of inventory and shipment release decisions, an integrated approach of making the operational decisions is necessary. This coordinated approach considers deterioration cost, inventory cost, and transportation cost.

Tradeoff decisions between different supply chain costs are not straightforward as the problem contains constraints like inventory capacity and transportation constraints from suppliers to …