Transport Planning in Processing Plants for the Fruit Industry

Processing plants are central for the operation of fruit supply chains. One of the main aspects to consider is fruit transportation to the processing plant. Hence, this work proposes a mixed integer linear programming model to support the fruit transport planning from the storage facilities to the processing plant. The aim of the model is to minimize the daily transportation costs and associated costs of different storage facilities from where fruits are supplied to the plant in order to meet the demand. The model considers plant processing capacity, fruit demand, number and type of trucks available and the inventory of fruit in each type of storage facilities. The model was applied to a real case study of a processing plant located in the O'Higgins Region (Chile), where reported savings only in transport costs reached about 23 percent.