International Journal of Supply and Operations Management
Volume:2 Issue: 2, Summer 2015

The study determined optimum inventory levels for various bakery resources using the bread supply chain network in Onitsha City. Structured questionnaires were administered among bakery factories. The optimum design achieved through the optimization model was compared with the existing systems. Analysis of 90 bakeries with a combined capacity of 3960 revealed that total money N 564,408,477.28 is spent on energy annually. Of this amount, 66.75% is expended annually to meet diesel requirements, while firewood and petrol account for 22.57% and 10.66%, respectively. The results of the ABC analysis show that flour ranks as class A with over 78%, followed by sugar at 13%, whilst the remainder of the ingredients constitutes 9%. High operating costs was identified as a major factor militating against the growth of the sector. Consequently, baked bread is expensive and remuneration is very poor, making the industry less attractive. The implementation of optimization practice adds value leading to savings amounting to N 6,957.51, thus enhancing the supply chain competiveness. The annual supply chain performance measured by inventory turnover shows a frequency of 73 inventory turns. Since the bakeries contribute to ensuring food security, these findings, if implemented, will assuage the rising food insecurity in the nation.

Delivering perishable products to customers as soon as possible and with the minimum cost has been always a challenge for producers and has been emphasized over recent years due to the global market becoming more competitive. In this paper a multi-objective mix integer non-linear programming model is proposed to maximize both profits of a distributer and the total freshness of the several products to be delivered to customers with respect to their demands and with consideration of different soft time windows for each customer, heterogeneous distribution fleet and customer selection option for the distributer. The proposed model is solved with TH method. The two genetic algorithm and simulated annealing algorithm are used to solve large-sized problems. Finally, their results are compared to each other when the optimization software becomes unable of solution representation.

Today, the global business environment compels enterprises to consider rest of the world in their competitive strategy analysis where firms ignore external factors such as economic trends, competitive positions or technology advancement in other countries. While going truly global with supply chain management, a company develops product in the United States, produce in India and trade in Europe, and they have changed the traditional operation management & logistical activities. This change in trade and the modernization of transport infrastructures have elevated the importance of flow management to new levels. Manufacturers and researchers have noticed many problems concerning supply chain activities, and usually either a system or subcomponent in supply chains is discussed in the literature, but they fails to answer the rational (why, what, how) behind them. This paper addresses a review of the principles, bottlenecks and strategies of supply chain practices for organizations with an emphasis on the implications of Indian agri-food sector. Findings of this review reveal that the human & environmental issues, improved product visibility, food safety/quality and the associated economic benefits in sustainable agri-food supply chains can be achieved through innovation, collaboration, elimination of uncertainties and introducing global SCM practices into green & lean initiatives.

The competition increscent urgency in the global economy causes many organizations focus more on novel management ideas in constructing, delivery services and their productions. In current conditions, supply chain and the importance of a suitable performance evaluating system in order to understand the current condition and program for its improvement, has a very special importance in creating surplus value for clients. In this research, the performance of 7 active supply chains in tile industry which have similar supply chain construction, including providers, producers, distributors and clients, by evaluating producers who perform a key role in chains and by using data envelopment analysis method are considered. According to effectiveness of inputs on outputs of organizations, outputs are considered as functions of inputs and finally the relative performance amounts of decision making units, the key companies of chain supply are computed.

This paper deals with a deterministic inventory model for deteriorating items under the condition of permissible delay in payments with constant demand rate is a function of time which di ffers from before and after deterioration for a single item. Shortages are allowed and completely backlogged which is a function of time. Under these assumptions, this paper develops a retailer's model for obtaining an optimal cycle length and ordering quantity in deteriorating items of an inventory model. Thus, our objective is retailer's cost minimization problem to nd an optimal replenishment policy under various parameters. The convexity of the objective function is derived and the numerical examples are provided to support the proposed model. Sensitivity analysis of the optimal solution with respect to major parameters of the model is included and the implications are discussed.

A significant portion of Gross Domestic Production (GDP) in any country belongs to the transportation system. Transportation equipment, in the other hand, is supposed to be great consumer of oil products. Many attempts have been assigned to the vehicles to cut down Greenhouse Gas (GHG). In this paper a novel heuristic algorithm based on Clark and Wright Algorithm called Green Clark and Wright (GCW) for Vehicle Routing Problem regarding to fuel consumption is presented. The objective function is fuel consumption, drivers, and the usage of vehicles. Being compared to exact methods solutions for small-sized problems and to Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm solutions for large-scaled problems, the results show efficient performance of the proposed GCW algorithm.

In this research author reviews references related to the topic of multi criterion (goal programming, multiple objective linear and nonlinear programming, bi-criterion programming, Multi Attribute Decision Making, Compromise Programming, Surrogate Worth Trade-off Method) and various versions of vehicle routing problem (VRP), Multi depot VRP (MDVRP), VRP with time windows (VRPWTW), Stochastic VRP (SVRP), Capacitated VRP (CVRP), Fuzzy VRP (FVRP), Location VRP (LVRP), Backhauling VRP(BHVRP), Facility Location VRP (FLVRP), and Inventory control VRP (ICVRP). Although, VRP is a research area with rich research works and powerful researchers there found only 81 articles that relates various vehicle routing type problems with various multiple objectives techniques. This author found that there is no research done in some areas of VRP (i.e., FVRP, ICVRP, LRP and CVRP). It is interesting to see that this research area was completely an unattractive to master students (with zero research reported) and a somewhat attractive area to doctoral students (with 6 researches reported). Among the many multi criterion programming techniques available only three of them (goal programming, bi-criterion programming, linear and nonlinear multi objective programming) are being employed to solve the problem.