Modelling Pricing Policy Based on Shelf-Life of Non Homogeneous Available-To-Promise in Fruit Supply Chains

摘要

Fruit Supply Chains (SCs) are influenced by uncontrollable natural factors causing heterogeneity in their products, as regards certain attributes that are relevant to customers and vary over time because of the shelf-life. As a consequence customers should be served not only with the required quantity and due date as usual, but also with the quality, freshness and homogeneity specified in their orders. The order promising process (OPP) is based on the uncommitted availability of homogeneous product quantities in planned lots (ATP) that are uncertain. Therefore, there is a risk of not being reliable in the commitments because of discrepancies between the real and planned homogeneous quantities. Furthermore, due to the shelf-life (SL), serving customers with the freshest product introduce the risk of increasing waste because of the aging process. To efficiently manage these risks, this work proposes a mathematical model for handling the heterogeneous ATP in fruit SCs and a pricing policy based on the product SL in the moment of delivery. In order to illustrate the application of the modelling approach, a short numerical example is introduced. The example evidences a conflictive situation when optimizing the assignation of homogeneous ATP between serving orders with fresh and more valuable product, what could lead to increase the risk of having waste because of expiration, and consequently, more costs and less profit.