Simulation Of Perishable Food Supply Chain: A Case Study Of Strawberry

Abstract

Fresh fruit has become key commodities on local and international trade markets. This has become an important source of economic income for many developing countries, such as Vietnam. Nevertheless, the fresh fruit industry in developing countries is experiencing critical issues, including short shelf life, high wastage, poor quality, and food safety, due to postharvest losses and poor postharvest handling. Identification of the sources and causes of these losses is an essential postharvest management strategy that is key in enhancing food and nutrition security and livelihood sustainability in developing countries. The goal of the study was to characterize postharvest losses in strawberry supply chains in Lam Dong Province. A traditional fresh strawberry supply chain, which involves farms, processors, transportation, distribution, and markets was used as a case study to facilitate the exploration. To address this issue, the discrete-event simulation was employed to evaluate the changes in the performance of the typical strawberry supply chain. Key performance indicators, such as lead time, shelf life, and wastage were compared. The simulation study highlighted the need for all players in the agriculture fresh supply chain to record and keep data on the movement of produce. This information should incorporate volumes traded and lost, waiting times, delays for them to be able to identify where they are losing productivity and attempt to minimize the losses as best as they can. Sensitivity analyses of the strawberry model showed that the changing decay rate resulted in a change of wastage index. This proved that simulation models can be used to test alternative modeling scenarios without tampering with the actual system.