Bacteria In The Food Supply Chain Control Model

In this paper, we studied contamination control problem in food supply chain. Our purpose was to find out some effective control policy along the whole supply chain. We wanted to minimize the total control cost in the food supply chain, meanwhile having the food safety level satisfying some statutory standards in every stage of the supply chain. Introducing the idea of optimization, a dynamic programming with constraints was established. We developed an algorithm and studied the sensitivity of parameters in the model. Furthermore, through analyzing the optimal solution of a special case of the general model, we found out that its optimal policy was similar to the ordering policy in inventory management. Next, we extended the deterministic model to stochastic case. Again, an algorithm was brought up and some properties were studied.