Optimization Model And Algorithom For Distribution Perishable Products Based On Freshness

Recently,the growth of persiable products orders in e-comerce reflects the enormous potential of fresh market.Timely delivery of perishable products is of importance to the fresh e-commerce operation.However,the fresh e-commerce logistics of China is in the initial development stage at present.The logistics of perishable products presents “inefficiency,high cost and spoilage” characteristic.Low freshness,delayed and slow delivery complain ratio account for more than 70%.These problems seriously restrict the growth of fresh e-commerce.Becuase traditional perishable goods distribution focuses on minimizing the distribution cost of perishable goods.However,perishable products freshness affects customer satisfaction.High freshness is exact the critical factor in the competition of fresh e-commerce.The deterioration of perishable goods demands the timely delivery.The cost of fresh products distribution is very high.Furthermore,with the recent rapid development in fresh e-commerce,the characteristics of orders tend to be of dispersive,smaller lot-size,higher frequency,which have increased the complexity of distribution problems.Scientific decision and strategy can effectively improve the distribution efficiency and logistics service level,and then improve customer satisfaction and reduce the logistics cost.The research can examine the relationship between distribution costs and freshness trade-off,then provide guidance for the distribution optimization and improve the efficiency of fresh e-comermece operation.The main contents of this paper are as follows:(1)In view of the fresh e-commerce development,we analyze the characteristics of perishable products,introduce the detailed operation of perishable products distribution,and explain its present situation and difficulties.We indicate the important role of delivery strategy in the process of perishable products distribution.(2)Aiming at the high cost and low freshness problems in perishable products distribution,this paper proposes a mathematical model to consider freshness and time window constrains in delivering perishable products.Concerning time-sensitive spoilage rates,highly perishable products have an important role in the operational distribution process.The delivery time and the orders fulfillment time window interrelate with each other.They joint determine the service condition,which make the research more practical.In our work,we are concerned with not only the perishable products freshness,but also the time windows constraints.We establish a multi-objective optimization model with perishability and mixed time windows to minimize the distribution costs and maximize the freshness of perishable products.Then,a bi-objective genetic heuristic algorithm is elaborated to solve the complex problem.The computation results suggest that the proposed model can achieve significant improving in the freshness aspect while slight increasing the distribution cost,and offer better support to decision makers.The results also examine the relationship between distribution costs and freshness trade-off and guidance the fresh e-comerce distribution development direction in a certain extent.(3)The freshness of perishable products is closely related to the time.Meanwhile,different fresh delivery orders have specific space and time characteristics.Then,we design a clustering-optiminization heuristic algorithm to minimize the distribution costs and maximize the freshness,which is composed of a variable neighborhood search method and a genetic algorithm considering the spatio-temporal distance.The solution algorithms are evaluated through a series of experiments.It is demonstrated that these algorithms can lead to a substantial decrease in the computation time and major improvements in solutions quality,thus revealing the efficiency of considering the spatio-temporal strategy.This paper focuses on the perishable products distribution problem.We explore the application from the dimensions of economy and satisfaction,respectively.We are concerned with not only the freshness and time windows of perishable products,but also the temporal-spatical characteristics.Then,we further study the cost and freshness trend of different strategies and algorithoms as orders change.This study can provide some guidance for fresh e-commerce management department with delivery mode decision.