Developing urban logidtics towards sustainable supply chain of fresh fruits during and post-covid-19 pandemic: A case of Ho Chi Minh city

Abstract

In 2021, the Vietnamese economy in general and the logistics industry, in particular, have been significantly impacted by the complicated COVID-19 epidemic, especially the outbreak at the end of April. COVID-19 led to limits on the mobility of labor, changes in consumer demand, the closure of food manufacturing facilities, limited food trade rules, and financial strains in the supply chain of necessities. This leads to the high risk of disruption of the supply chain of necessities. On September 30, 2021, Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) issued a Directive on continuing to control the COVID-19 epidemic and gradually recover socio-economic conditions in the city to ensure sustainable social security for city people; bring people's daily life to a “new normal”. As a result, Vietnamese authorities and businesses began to pay more attention to sustainable urban logistics during and post COVID-19, especially for the fresh products. This thesis aims to develop urban logistics toward the sustainable supply chain in HCMC. This thesis will offer an optimal mathematical model for enabling sustainable urban logistics by minimizing the total cost and optimizing distribution network. Mixed-integer Linear Programming (MILP) model with three conflicting objectives is proposed. Then a Weighted Sum Method is considered as the approach to deal with the multi-criteria problem. To validate the model's effectiveness, a case study of HCMC is undertaken, and the CPLEX program is used for optimization.