Air Modal Perishable Cargo Dispatch: Case Study of a Sustainable Proposal Assisted by Process Modelling and Simulation

. The importance of perishable transport is clearly observed in research to agile logistic techniques and fragile cargos. This case study evaluates a project that considers a sustainable option for cooling perishable fillers using Polyethylene Terephthalate bottles (PET bottles) as cooling elements. The analysis was supported by modeling and simulation technologies based on stochastically timed Petri nets for strategic management of the material supply chain (boxes and PET bottles) for the air modal dispatch process. The optimization process of this straightforward method was submitted to more than 10,500 dispatches of perishable cargo in a logistics operator from Minas Gerais (Brazil) and was considered the evaluation of the following parameters during this study: temperature variation, delivery time and compliance with customer requirements. As most prominent results, there is a dispatch methodology that yielded a monthly saving of more than R$ 36,000 (Brazilian reais) and an open-source tool for supply chain simulation. The simulations were able to evaluate the supply of raw material for the process based on PET bottles for a horizon of approximately 2 years, allowing the forecast of unmet demands, and identify which shortages caused the process interruption.