Shipment Consolidation Optimization Research By Considering The Freeshness Of Perishable Products

As the continuous improvement of China's comprehensive national strength and people's living standard in recent years,the supply,demand and sales channels of fresh products all rapidly grow.Especially from 2010 to 2016,online fresh product E-commerces emerge one after another.It makes fresh products' orders have the characteristics of small batch,more frequency and high demand requirements.And compared with common products,fresh products are perishable,which often shows the different characters.For example,the freshness of perishable products can be affected by the external environment.There is the lowest freshness limited when perishable products are used.All perishable products need to be serviced by some special and expensive refrigeration logistics facilities and equipments.However,there are only more than forty thousand refrigerated vehicles now.That does not satisfy the demand in the perishable goods market.Therefore,in order to fully use these refrigerated vehicles,perishable logistic companies should apply the shipment consolidation operation method,which makes these companies get the maximum benefit.But no matter from the perspective of theoretical research or entity company operation,a scientific and reasonable shipment consolidation operation mehtod for perishable products industry has not yet formed.Many perishable managers are still in the situation with high logistic cost and low profit,even loss.Consequently,how to effectively combine perishable products' freshness character,realize the economic and reasonable shipment consolidation operation method for perishable products is one of the problems that the logistics managers need to solve.On the supply chain background for fresh products,this paper studies the pure logistic shipment consolidation problem,the integrated logistic shipment consolidation problem with replenishment decision and the integrated logistic shipment consolidation problem with pricing decision by reviewing the perishable products' warehouse management literature and the shipment consolidation literature and combining the research results on the perishable products' quality change rules and shipment consolidation policies.The concrete research content is shown below.(1)Considering a logistic company who only provides transportation service for perishable products,this paper fomulates a pure shipment consolidation model for peirshable products by applying the quantity-based shipment consolidaiton policy when the lowest dispatching freshness of prducts is required.Analyzing this model,the inherent law is found that the average expected transportation cost and the avergae expected shipment consolidation penalty cost change with the products' accumulative quantity.This paper also explores whether the logistic company should apply the shipment consolidation policy and the optimal accumulative quantity when the shipment consolidation policy is used.Next,three factors,the different shipment consolidation policies,the freshness-keeping effort and the limited capacity of each truck,are involved in above model,respectively.By performing numerical experiments and simulations,this paper shows the effect of all parameters of demand,cost,perishable products' charactor,freshness-keeping effort and truck capacity on the optimal accumulated quantity and the average expected shipment consolidation cost.Furthermore,the applicable scenario of each shipment consolidation policy is given by analyzing the computing results of the average expected cost and the average customer responding time.(2)Considering a three party logistic(3PL)company who provides stock and trasportation service for perishsable products and needs to make the replenishment decision,this paper fomulates an integrated shipment consolidation model for peirshable products by applying the time-based shipment consolidaiton policy to jointly optimize the replensihment and shipment consoldiation decisions when the lowest dispatching freshness of prducts is required.Whether the 3PL company should replenish stock in advance or/and accumulate shipment is analyzed.Moreover,this paper also gives the expressions of the optimal replenishment level and the optimal shipment consolidation time.Then,three factors,the freshness-keeping effort,the finite replenishment capacity and the limited capacity of each truck,are involved in above model,respectively.Based on whether the 3PL company makes replenishment in advance and whether the 3PL company applies shipment consolidation policy,this paper develops four types of operation methods.And the changing trend of the optimal operation method for the 3PL company is showed when the cost structure,the decay rate of perishable products and the demand rate change,respectively.Finally,by conducting some numerical experiments and simulations,this paper shows the effect of the replenishment capacity and the tuck capacity on the optimal replenishment level,the optimal accumulated time and the average customer responding time.(3)Considering a perishable product wholesaler who decides products' price and faces the demand that is sensitive to products' price,quality and responding time,this paper formulates the integrated shipment consolidation problem with pricing decision by applying the time-based policy when the lowest dispatching freshness of prducts is required.Then,this paper studies whether the replenishment in advance and/or shipment consolidation policy should be applied by the wholesaler.And the optimal replensihment level and the optimal accumulated time are both showed.Next,three factors,the freshness-keeping effort,the limited capacity of each truck and the dynamic pricing problem among different shipment consolidaiton cycles,are involved in above model,respectively.By conducting some numerical experiments,this paper shows the effect of the freshness-keeping effort and the the tuck capacity on the integrated shipment consolidation problem based on the average expected shipment consolidation profit and the average customer responding time.Comparing the computing results of the one-time pricing model and the dynamic pricing model,the management insight is obtained in order to help the peirshable product wholesaler make product price decision.The quality spoilage of perishable products and the complexity of shipment consolidation optimization problems result in that the research of peishable products' shipment consoliation problem is still in the begginning stage.This paper firstly studies the pure perishable product shipment consolidation problem.Then,it extends toward upstream and downstream of supply chain,respectively.Gradually,the integrated shipment consolidation problems with the replenishment decision and the product pricing decision are analyzed in this paper.Therefore,this paper improves the research of peishable products shipment consolidation problem and develops a systematic shipment consolidation optimization theory for perishable products.The innovativeness of research content and research results:(1)Combining the products' perishable characteristicses and the existing shipment consolidation policies,this paper fomulates the pure logistic shipment consolidation model,the integrated logistic shipment consolidation model with relelishment decision and the integrated logistic shipment consolidation model with product pricing decision by considering the lowest dispatching quality requirement of perishable products.(2)Based on studying the pure shipment consolidation problem and the integrated shipment consolidation problem for perishable products,this paper shows the sufficient conditions that the company should not make replenishment in advance and accumulate shipment,respectively.Furthmore,all expressions of the optimal replenishment level and the optimal accumulated quantity(time)are given.(3)Due to the complexity of solving the shipment consolidation optimization problem for perishable products,this paper develops two algorithms to solve the integrated shipment conolidation model with the replenishment decision and the product pricing decision,respectively.(4)This paper considers some practical factors,such as different shipment consolidaiton policies,the freshness-keeping effort,the truck capacity,the replenishment capacity and the dynamic pricing among different shipment consolidation cycles,to extend the basic shipment consolidation model.And by conducting numerical experiments and simulations,how these factors affect the shipment consolidation parameters and cost(profit)are showed.To sum up,in view of multi-angle research of the shipment consolidation problem for different operationors in perishable product supply chian,this results in this paper not only has theoretical value,but also has realistic reference value when the logistics company makes the shipment consolidation decision for perishable products.