Grapes reception is a key process in wine production. The harvest days are extremely challenging days in managing the reception of the grapes, as the winery needs to deal with the non-uniform arrival of the grapes, while guaranteeing suppliers' satisfaction and wine quality. The best management of the resources of the suppliers (i.e., grapes and trucks) and winery (i.e., grain-tanks and pressing machines) must be ensured. In this paper, the underlying optimization problem for grape reception is solved by developing a genetic algorithm (GA) tailored for this specific challenge. The results of this algorithm are compared with a FIFO policy for a typical scenario that occurs on the harvest days of a real winery. Additionally, different scenarios are simulated to assess the validity and quality of the solutions found. The results show that, using modest computational resources, it is possible to achieve better solutions with the proposed GA. This allows for the algorithm to be used in real time, even whenever plant conditions change significantly (e.g., when a new truck arrives, when a machine fails). Furthermore, the trucks and grapes waiting time for the results using the developed GA are significantly smaller than the ones observed using a FIFO approach.
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