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Food Supply chain Management sustainability: A Review

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 Food Supply chain Management sustainability: A Review
Anil Kumar
Assistant Professor,
VNS Institute of Management Bhopal(MP)- India

Dr. G.S. Kushwaha

Assistant Professor
Department of Management studies
Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology Bhopal(MP) - India

ABSTRACT

The National Food Security Bill 2013 which was passed by way of an Ordinance in the parliament is
no small feat undertaken by the Government of India. This bill promises subsidized food grains to
nearly 68% of India’s 1.2 Billion populations at a cost of nearly USD 4 Billion. The bill aims to
provide quality food grains and nutritional security, to under privileged children, women and poorer
sections of the society, at affordable prices. Indeed a very noble and ambitious plan but lots of supply
chain issues will have to be addressed on a war footing by the government.
The need to improve food quality and reduce food waste leads to increased attention for the
development of Food Supply Chain Management, which considers natural characteristics of food
supply chains besides traditional supply chain management objectives such as cost and responsiveness.
Growing consciousness of society towards sustainable development brings additional objectives to the
food supply chains and the fast evolution of sustainable development results in the development of a
new fast-growing concept: Sustainability in Food Supply Chain Management. In response to these
developments, researchers have developed various decision support tools that can be used for handling
progressively increasing complexity along the alteration process from supply chain management to
food supply chain management and now to sustainable food supply chain management. This study,
reviewed literature on food supply chain management to identify supply chain key issues and relevant
quantitative modelling challenges. The reviewed papers show that obtaining sustainability together
with considering natural characteristics of food supply chains, there is a gap between the needs of the
practice and the current available methods. This study also presented improvement opportunities for
future research by revealing the above missing points.
Keywords: Food supply chain management, Sustainability, Perishability, Quantitative models,
Qualitative models, Key performance indicators, Literature review, sustainable supply chain,
traceability, food quality, and responsiveness.

1. Introduction
Food Supply Chain management comprises organizations, which are producing and distributing
agriculture based products to consumers. There are different kind of diseases and globalisation of food
production, consumers are more conscious about the origin of their food, leading to a growing interest
in traceability, freshness and quality of what they have bought. Along with this, product assortments
are widened by producers for satisfying the consumer's broadening needs which results in more
complicated lot sizing decisions and increasing transportation costs. Moreover, current projections
show a continued increase in world population so as to population of India. Due to these developments
food supply chain management (FSCM) has become an important issue in both public and business
agendas. It requires a different management approach that considers natural characteristics of food
products and processes besides traditional SCM objectives such as cost and responsiveness. Over the
last few decades, scholars and practitioners have put more stress on FSCM than ever before. In
addition to that, recently FSCs are confronted with another trend, sustainability, which requires new
approaches in FSCM. Sustainability is meeting the needs of people who are living today without

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causing damage to the future generations (Linton et al., 2007). Driving factors for sustainability can be
enumerated as current legislation, public interest or competitive opportunity (Linton et al., 2007).
Sustainable development deals with balances between ecological, economical and social processes at
the level of society in the long term. It stresses the importance of key issues which are closely related
with human well-being and the natural environment. Therefore, the quality of the product that is
served by companies to customer needs to be competitive, socially fair, environmentally safe and
profitable, besides being produced efficiently. The fast evolution of sustainable development changes
the goals in every supply chain including FSCs and makes conventional food supply chain strategies
inappropriate leading to the development of a new fast growing concept: sustainable food supply chain
management (SFSCM).
The major factors that contributed to this area are raising consciousness on sustainable system
dynamics as well as governments change regulations by enacting strict rules on food safety and
sustainability problems to impose firms on taking necessary precautions against the social and
environmental impacts of their operations. In terms of sustainability, companies operating in the
agriculture and the food sector are confronted with: (1) accelerating environmental and social impact
assessment policy and standards such as ISO22000 enacted by governments; (2) emerging concept of
extended producers responsibility supporting the shift from "cradle to grave" to "cradle to cradle"
perspective (Neto et al., 2009) imposed from either governments or influential private institutions and
(3) gradually increasing discussions brought to the agenda by the society on pursuing life without
compromising future generation's rights to live.
This change from traditional SCM to FSCM increase the complexity of supply chains results in more
challenging SCM to consider multiple performance indicators. Companies have to invest in a redesign
of their logistics network to increase responsiveness, improve food quality, reduce food waste and
improve sustainability and transparency. As a result, the traditional performance indicator cost is
replaced by the emerging Triple Bottom Line (TBL) concept in which Profit, People and Planet are the
drivers towards performance (van der Vorst et al., 2009).This change evokes the need for an integrated
approach that links supply chain decisions to the three pillars of sustainability.
Sustainability is not a new research area and much literature is available to this subject. However, food
supply chain systems are complex comprising a wide diversity of products with different
characteristics and quality management requirements, enterprises, dynamic interactions and markets
making the decisions concerning the FSCs such as production and distribution decisions more
challenging. Therefore, quantitative models are often used to support management decision making in
analysing scenarios and deciding on effective redesigns of the chain
The aim of this study is to identify supply chain key issues and model challenges in food supply chain
management with reference to sustainability. This study conducted a literature review on quantitative
studies concerning food supply chain management with reference to sustainability. The focus of this
study is on the inter-organizational chain logistics necessary to improve food quality and sustainability.
The comparisons of selected studies with respect to various factors such as performance indicators,
environment, product and model characteristics as well as sustainability, transparency and quality
concerns has been done in this study
2. Research Methodology
This study focus on quantitative and qualitative models about food supply chain management which
helps to develop the discussion and to understand related supply chain key issues clearly. The literature
search was based on the following search criteria : sustainable food logistics management, food
supply chain, production and distribution planning, food supply chain quantitative models, food
supply chain qualitative models, sustainability in food supply chains, food safety/security issues in
food supply chains.
Conceptual framework for this study (see Fig.1) comprises five aspects: (1) identifying logistics key
issues, (2) current available methods, (3) needs for new/advanced models, (4) quantitative model
challenges and (5) qualitative model challenges. Using this framework, this study tries to determine
key model challenges for food supply chain management.

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Identifying logistics
Quantitative Model
key issues
Challenges

Needs for
new/advanced
Current available models Qualitative model
methods challenges

(Figure 1)
The review studies about quantitative models in food supply chains (Ahumada and Villalobos, 2009a
and Akkerman et al., 2010), discussed production and distribution planning for agri-foods and food
distribution management for various foods supply chains. The study present detailed information with
respect to relevant models and focus on sustainability.
2.1. Logistics key issues
The current food industry has interconnected system of various complex relationships for the logistics
management of food products, because of consumers’ concerns related to food safety scandals and
globalization of food production (Trienekens and Zuurbier, 2008). Food security is still a considerable
problem because of the growing population which is projected to reach 9Bn by 2050 (Global Food
Security, 2012) that requires focus on the reduction of food waste. In food supply chains reaching the
right customer, at the right time, at the right level of quality, with the appropriate remaining shelf life
and with the right route through the chain are crucial factors for maintaining competitive advantage
(Ahumada and Villalobos, 2011). However, this claim needs to be extended when sustainability
concerns are involved in decision making. The ultimate goal in a sustainable food supply chain is to
ensure customer satisfaction with the most efficient and effective way as well as keeping in mind the
impacts of operations on the environment and society. This study consider the relevant literature to
cover the core issues in sustainable food supply chain management in three groups: (1) Reducing cost
and improving responsiveness, (2) improving food quality and reducing food waste, and (3) improving
sustainability and transparency. This sequence can be considered as phases of sustainable food supply
chain management.
2.1.1. Reducing cost and improving responsiveness
In traditional supply chain it concerns about Cost and responsiveness issues. In today’s time
consumer’s demand high quality food in various innovative forms throughout the year with a
competitive price (Trienekens and Zuurbier,2008).The aim of supply chain management to achieve
better customer service with lesser cost while satisfying the various requirements of other stakeholders
in the chain. This changing system leads to the need of advanced models and tools for planning the
supply chain operations (Mula et al., 2010) and global coordination and optimization of geographically
dispersed facilities to reduce operations costs. Today problems in food supply chains are more
sophisticated than in the past (Bilgen and Ozkarahan, 2007) and companies in the food industry focus
mainly on cost reduction.
Supply chain responsiveness, has two main dimensions; one of them is the time between placing and
receiving an order and the other one is how quickly companies respond to customer’s uniquely and
rapidly changing needs. Responsiveness is the key to maintain customer satisfaction and customer
service in the food industry. In Gunasekaran et al. (2008) the key factors for forming a responsive
supply chain were mentioned as follows: timely information sharing, shortening the total cycle time,
coordinating the workflow at different echelons of the supply chain, good decision support systems,
reducing lead times for information and materials flows, integrating information about operations,
reducing redundant echelons, and flexible capacity. Therefore on one hand increased product diversity
and competition leads to decrease in inventories to reduce inventory costs; on the other hand keeping
more inventories always guarantees responding quickly to consumers. So, food supply chains try to

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maintain a reasonable balance between these two decision areas: reducing cost versus improving
responsiveness.
2.1.2. Improving food quality and reducing food waste
Food quality and waste issues are the two main reasons for the transition from the traditional supply
chain management to the food supply chain management which has additional challenges and
complexity compared to traditional supply chain management. In food supply chains, there is a
continuous change in the quality of the food product starting from the time the raw material leaves the
producer to the time the product reaches to the consumer (Dabbene et al., 2008). Perishable products
have a shorter shelf life (van Donselaar et al., 2006). These changes in product value make
conventional supply chain strategies inappropriate which do not take perishability into account
(Blackburn and Scudder, 2009). Current food supply chains are serving to consumers who are more
concerned about food safety and security issues than ever before. Also, other stakeholders have
growing concern on these issues leading to formation of global organizations dealing with food related
problems, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), the world health organisation (WHO), both
UN organisation and the World Trade Organization and meet two criteria: (1) high rate of deterioration
at ambient storage conditions and requiring specific storage conditions to slow the deterioration rate,
(2) an obsolescence date of the product such that reordering for the products with the same date is
impractical (e.g. newspapers and (bi)weekly magazines can be considered perishables(van Donselaar
et al., 2006)
These organizations aim at improvements in availability of and access to healthy food and have
various missions such as setting norms and standards, providing technical support to countries or
monitoring and assessing operations. Regarding perishability issue, van der Vorst et al. (2007; 2011)
have proposed the innovative concept of Quality Controlled Logistics (QCL) and claimed that better
supply chain design can be established, if product quality is tracked along the supply chain. Moreover,
throughout the food supply chains among the world, the food waste is progressively increasing. To
give an example from the India, According to World Bank, productivity losses in India due to stunted
growth, iodine deficiencies and iron deficiencies are equal to almost 3% of GDP. The study indicates
that 20-40% food grown spoils before reaching to the final consumer. Federation of Indian Chambers
of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) undertook a survey and find out bottlenecks in Indian Food
Industry; they found that 44.25% of Respondents quoted inadequate infrastructural facilities as a main
challenge. Infrastructural facilities mainly comprises of logistics network and warehousing. The Food
Corporation of India plans to rework its supply-chain management. Same is in all other countries as
well and the world is still facing big problems related with the food industry which are waiting to be
solved. Therefore, there is a growing need for special quantitative models which can tackle the
perishability and waste problems in food supply chain management.
2.1.3. Improving sustainability and transparency
Sustainability and transparency issues lead to the need for sustainable food supply chain management
to deal with additional challenges and much more increased complexity compared to traditional supply
chain management. Apart from the traditional complexity of the food supply chains, sustainability
concerns are rapidly growing in the field of OR/OM and food supply chain management. Kyoto
Protocol, which set binding targets for industrialized countries can be consider as the most outstanding
and recent step of governments towards achieving sustainable development. EU is also a highly
influential proponent of sustainability (Linton et al., 2007) and important EU regulation concerning
sustainability is, The General Food Law (Regulation EC/178/2002). This mainly related with the
growing concern about the future and the concept of sustainable supply chain design has emerged
which aims to incorporate economic, environmental as well as societal decisions into supply chains in
the design phase ((Chaabane et al., 2012); (Wang et al., 2011)). Escalating sustainability consciousness
of stakeholders in food supply chains affects the decision making process and operations in integrating
supply chain decisions to the three pillars of sustainability (Chaabane et al., 2012) with quality
consideration is necessary for companies. According to Seuring and Muller (2008) the pressures and
incentives for sustainability in supply chains are listed as follows: legal demands legislation, customer
demands, response to stakeholders, competitive advantage, environmental and societal pressure

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groups, and reputation loss. However, it is obvious that investments to improve environmental care
need to be balanced against other investments (Wognum et al., 2011) or the social and environmental
dimensions of sustainability must be undertaken with a clear and explicit recognition of the economic
goals of the firm (Carter and Rogers, 2008).
Transparency has also growing impact on food supply chains. Consumers want to get more insight in
production processes as well as what had happened to the product as it went through the supply chain
(Vis, 2012). This places emphasis on the people and planet aspects of sustainability. In order to
achieve transparency and tracking and tracing of products and services throughout the value chain,
intensified integration and cooperation between the actors of the chain and improved monitoring of
process activities (Fritz and Schiefer, 2008) is required.
2.2. Current Methods
This study presented the main characteristics of the existing models in literature which is followed by a
discussion about the performance indicators considered in these models for each of the above logistics
key issues.
2.2.1. Model Characteristics
Due to the growing attention to food supply chain management in the operations management (OM)
literature (Akkerman et al., 2010) in the last decade, the number of studies on food logistics
management is increasing. The existing models of food logistics management and their main
characteristics are derived in Table 1. The studies are investigated in terms of model type, decisions
incorporated, linearity, solution method, containing uncertainty, decision planning horizon structure,
transportation mode, existing application either real or hypothetical data and field of study.
Production, transportation and inventory management are the main supply chain drivers (Chopra and
Meindl, 2010) in a supply chain, the common objective of all models is improving the performance of
the related food logistics system by helping the decision making process. For the above problems,
scholars have proposed various types of models: Mixed Integer Programming (MIP), Linear
Programming (LP), Multi Objective Programming (MOP), Goal Programming (GP), Analytical and
Simulation models. Different software programs have been used or approaches have been developed
for obtaining solutions from the developed models. Except for a few studies which have non-linear
terms in their models, the focus is mostly on the use of linear models. Some models serve to the
purpose of multi decision planning horizon, whereas some of them are developed for only single
period decision planning. Mode of transportation assumption is also different in studies.
Most of the real food supply chain problems are characterized by various sources of uncertainties i.e.
length of the order forecast horizon, information availability and data timeliness, decision policies
used, supply, process and demand uncertainties (van der Vorst et al., 2000). However one study
(Azaron et al., 2008) is keen to challenge incorporating stochastic elements into one’s model. Besides,
almost all of the proposed models are implemented in various food supply chains either by considering
collected real or generated hypothetical data.
2.2.2. Reducing cost and improving responsiveness
All the quantitative models in reviewed literature (see Table 2) try to minimize the costs of various
operations in food supply chain management. Most of the costs in quantitative models can be classified
into four main groups: production, inventory, distribution and other costs. In this list the last item,
other costs, represents costs which depend on the type of the food product such as milk collection, or
by-product credit. In some of the studies considering food quality decay ((Rong et al., 2011);
(Blackburn and Scudder, 2009); (Ahumada and Villalobos, 2009b)), cooling, wastage and/or quality
loss costs are handled within one or more of the main cost groups. Apart from the above main costs,
Rong and Grunow (2010) incorporate dispersion costs of batches into the quantitative model to solve
the trade-off between reducing production costs of the food products and reducing the concerns for
food safety. Different from other studies, Azaron et al. (2008) put emphasis on the minimization of the
variance of the total cost and the minimization of the financial risk (the probability of not meeting a
certain budget) besides cost minimization in a multi-objective model.
Few studies ((Ahumada and Villalobos, 2009b); (Bilgen and Gunther, 2010); (Blackburn and Scudder,
2009); (van der Vorst et al., 2000)) define strict deadlines such as a specific production lot that has to

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be finished up to a particular day or cycle time, food supply chain responsiveness is not explicitly
mentioned in literature. However for coordinating operations in related FSCs, it can be assumed that
all these developed quantitative models also serve the purpose of increasing responsiveness with
varying extent. Especially, forbidden stock-out possibilities in e.g. Rong et al. (2011), Akkerman et al.
(2009) (see Table 1) can be regarded as a management approach to improve customer responsiveness.
Stochastic quantitative models in literature have shortage costs to encourage satisfying customers’
demand on time that can contribute to the improved responsiveness. Apart from the studies related to
responsiveness, Blackburn and Scudder (2009) brought in Marginal Value of Time (MVT) rate to
measure the cost of a unit time delay in the SC and divided the FSC into two segments (a
‘‘responsive’’ segment in which product deterioration rates are high and an ‘‘efficient’’ segment with
lower deterioration rates), modelling each of them separately.
2.2.3 Improving food quality and reducing food waste
The perishability problem leading to food waste in food supply chains is very important and cannot be
ignore and affects many operations in supply chain. In response to the growing practical need, attempts
have been made to incorporate quality decay and waste of the product into quantitative models in food
supply chain management (see Table 2).
Most of the models in literature such as Zanoni and Zavanella (2007) assume that the quality of
products diminishes linearly and deemed useless after a specific time period. That means as long as
products are above the pre-specified minimum levels, they are regarded as acceptable and quality of
the products do not make difference in terms of market price or cost. However, because of quality
decays either part of the purchased goods cannot be sold on the market or can be sold with a lower
price than the best market price (Osvald and Stirn, 2008). To avoid these problems and to encourage
the freshness of products, a few studies ((Ahumada and Villalobos, 2009b); (Ahumada and Villalobos,
2011); (Osvald and Stirn, 2008)) consider the cost of inventory lost while being transported by
including that cost to the objective function. Rong et al. (2011) use a quantitative quality decay model
based on the Arrhenius equation.
The studies which handle the perishability problem in their models, some studies such as Rong and
Grunow (2010) and van der Vorst et al. (2009) also try to include temperature controls of the products
for determining the best temperatures throughout the chain (see Table 2). Akkerman et al. (2009)
include enthalpy level tracking to their models besides temperature controls.
A few of the studies in literature, You et al. (2011), Rong et al. (2011), Akkerman et al. (2009), van
der Vorst et al. (2009) and Wang et al. (2010) (see Table 2), has referred to the potential food waste
problem. Among these studies, You et al. (2011) and Rong et al. (2011), explicitly incorporate the
food waste problem into their models. In the above studies, products that lose their suitable freshness
are discarded and food waste or waste disposal costs are incurred. In the simulation model of Vorst et
al. (2009) product waste is added as a performance indicator.
2.2.3. Improving sustainability and transparency
Sustainability is not a new concept; the study in this field is considered as in its infancy period by
many scholars (Linton et al., 2007). The reviewed literature also supports that argument by having
only a small number of studies dealing with sustainable development (see Table 2) from the researched
perspective. The studies which take into account the new emerging sustainability goals, try to deal
with environmental objectives.
Reviewed literature shows that in terms of environmental perspective, GHG emission rates, energy
usage and water use indicators and in terms of societal perspective fat content of products and number
of accrued jobs are used in the quantitative models of food supply chain management.
All of the studies considering GHG emissions try to manage a single indicator in terms of carbon
dioxide–equivalent emissions (CO2-equiv/year) or carbon dioxide emissions (CO2/year) and aim to
coordinate good distribution. The environmental impact is expressed as kg CO2 per mile travelled. The
other environmental impact indicator use in the models relates to the various operations in food supply
chains such as refrigeration, heating, lighting or machine use and expressed as MJ per second/per ton
km. The common aim of the studies incorporating energy use is reducing the energy consumption
throughout the chain while keeping up operations. The consumption of an important natural resource,

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water, is also considered in a few studies e.g. (Ahumada and Villalobos, 2009b) with the aim of
controlling water use in related chains.
The studies in literature which take into account transparency focus on traceability of the product
along the chain. Bilgen and Gunther (2010) stress on a need in food supply chains that demand need to
be assigned to daily delivery periods rather than weeks because of short replenishment cycles and this
situation necessitates tracing the completion of production lots on a daily time scale. They introduced
auxiliary binary decision variables, so-called heavy side variables, which indicate that the specific
production lot has been finished on a specific line up to a particular day. Rong and Grunow (2010)
handle different problem and support the idea that traceability systems must be complemented with
suitable production and distribution planning approaches. In their model, they have a parameter called
batch ID for each production batch which consists of the information about batch number, product
type, production time, and production location. With this information they have tried to determine the
number of batches (setups), the batch sizes and which batches are delivered to which retailers in each
period. (Rong et al., 2011) developed model traces product batches of different quality throughout the
production and distribution network.
2.3. Needs for New Models
The reviewed literature on supply chain management with reference to sustainability shows that the
food industry needs more advanced models for the entire chain to support business decisions and
capture supply chain dynamics (Dabbene et al., 2008). All studies assumptions in the literature rely on
a completely deterministic environment. From the perspectives of ease of development (complexity) or
solvability of the developed models, researchers’ approach to the chain problems can be
understandable.
In most of the models perishability has been taken roughly into consideration. The main reason for
mishandling quality decay measurement is not easy since it can be dependent on many parameters
according to the food product and requires technological tracking systems.
Another finding that can be drawn from the reviewed papers is that research into supply chain
sustainability has so far received insufficient attention in literature. In response to the growing
concerns on sustainable development, the future models should help decision makers while
considering the environmental and societal bad impact of the chain operations. In order to develop new
environmental friendly quantitative models, firstly the impacts of various chain operations to the
environment or society should be clearly determined. Life Cycle Assessment Analyses serves to that
purpose of assessment of impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life. After determining
the key performance indicators for lessening their magnitudes and pursuing operations in a sustainable
way, researchers can incorporate them into the quantitative models and search for the improvement
opportunities.
Traceability helps to reveal knowledge and make it transparent so that it is visible to all stakeholders.
Traceability systems should be such that to track different characteristics of the products from
production to consumption and help to improve the transparency of the whole chain. Similar to
sustainability, traceability receives insufficient attention in literature (Rong and Grunow, 2010).
However, the increased availability of the information with new control systems on the origin or
physical condition of the product along the chain has potential to improve development of future
models.
Thus it can be concluded that adoption of sustainability concerns with respect to product together with
intrinsic characteristics of food supply chains such as perishability and transparency are prerequisites
for the success of quantitative models in sustainable manner in food supply chain management.
3. Conclusion
Food supply chain management is a complex process owing to the natural characteristics of supply
chains and fast moving and highly competitive food sector. Food supply chains are recently confronted
with sustainable development trend. The need for adding sustainability concerns into the food supply
chain management, results in much more complicated and challenging decision making process. This
study reviewed the quantitative studies on food logistics management while pointing out the above
alteration process. This study also consulted from some qualitative studies. This study gives special

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focus on logistics key issues and current available methods to identify quantitative models challenges
in sustainable food logistics management. The core issues in sustainable food logistics management
have been investigated in three groups: (1) Reducing cost and improving responsiveness, (2)
improving food quality and reducing food waste, and (3) improving sustainability and transparency.
As a result, the quantitative studies on food logistics management have been evaluated in terms of
characteristics of models and performance indicators considered for each of the above logistics key
issues. The conclusions drawn from this work assure that the research on sustainability in food supply
chain management is developing according to the needs of the food industry. The drawback of this
study is about its inadequacy of helping decision making process and capturing supply chain
dynamics. It is important to highlight that currently the literature is insufficient to respond to the
practical needs. The majority of the works reviewed do not contemplate on sustainability problems, the
sustainability concerns find place only in a few studies only. After this review, we come up with a
conclusion that the new models that take into consideration of demands from practice are required for
sustainable food supply chain management.
Table 1
Characteristics of food supply chain management studies
Authors Major characteristics of each studies

Ahuja(2007) Mixed Integer Programming non linear hypothetical model type was used in
this study. Decisions on production, Transportation and Inventory issues and
provide Heuristic solution By taking demand as stochastic element for multi-
period and single mode of transportation without specifying the field of study.
Study is stochastic in nature.
Bilgen and Mixed Integer Programming linear real model type was used in this study.
Ozkaranan(2007) Study is deterministic in nature. Decisions on production, Transportation and
Inventory issues and solution method ILOG OPL Studio 3.7 CPLEX 8.0 for
multi-period and multiple mode of transportation for wheat SC. Study is
deterministic in nature.
Zanoni and Mixed Integer Programming linear hypothetical model type was used in this
Zavanella(2007) study. Decisions on production, Transportation and Inventory issues and taking
Heuristic approach for solution for multi-period and single mode of
transportation without specifying the field of study. Study is deterministic in
nature.
Azaron et al(2008) Multi Objective Programming non linear hypothetical model type was used in
this study. Decisions regarding production, Transportation and Inventory issues
and took goal attainment technique-LINGO for solution By taking demand,
supply and cost as stochastic element for single period and single mode of
transportation and did study on wine. Study is stochastic in nature.
Dabbene et al(2008) An analytical non linear real model was used with reference to beef industry in
this study. Decisions on production, Transportation and Inventory issues and
provide
A specific optimisation algorithm as solution By taking chain behaviour as
stochastic element for multi-period and single mode of transportation. Study is
stochastic in nature.
Osvald and An analytical linear hypothetical model type was used in this study. Decisions
Stirn(2008) on production and Transportation issues and took Heuristic approach as
solution for single period and multiple mode of transportation with reference to
vegetables supply chain. Study is deterministic in nature
Ahumada and Mixed Integer Programming linear hypothetical model type was used in this
Villalobos(2009b) study. Decisions on production, Transportation and Inventory issues and took
AMPL- Cplex 10 method for solution for multi-period and single mode of
transportation and taking Pepper-tomatoes as the field of study. Study is

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 deterministic in nature.
Akkerman et Mixed Integer Programming linear model type was used in this study.
al(2009) Decisions on production, Transportation and Inventory issues but not specified
any method for solution for multi-period and single mode of transportation on
meat elements as specifying the field of study. Study is deterministic in nature.
Blackburn and An analytical real model was used with reference to melons and sweet corn
Scudder(2009) supply chain in this study. Decisions on production and Transportation issues
without specifying any method of solution for single-period and multiple mode
of transportation. Study is deterministic in nature.
Van der Vorst et A Simulation real model was used with reference to pineapples supply chain in
al(2009) this study. Decisions on production, Transportation and Inventory issues and
took ALADIN TM as method of solution and took product quality as stochastic
element for multi-period and multiple mode of transportation. Study is
stochastic in nature.
Bilgen and Mixed Integer Programming linear hypothetical model type was used with
Gunther(2010) reference to fruit juices and soft drinks in this study. Decisions on production,
Transportation and Inventory issues and provide ILOG’s OPL 6.1-Cplex 11.2
As solution method By taking multi-period and multi mode of transportation
with specifying the field of study as fruits and soft drinks. Study is
deterministic in nature.
Oglethorpe(2010) Goal Programming based real as well as hypothetical model type was used in
this study. Decisions on production and Transportation issues and used MS-
EXEL as solution method single mode of transportation with specifying the
field of study on pork. Study is deterministic in nature.
Rong and Mixed Integer Programming linear hypothetical model type was used in this
Grunow(2010) study. Decisions on production, Transportation and Inventory issues and used
Cplex 10.2, Heuristic as solution method for multi-period and single mode of
transportation without specifying the field of study. Study is deterministic in
nature.
Wang et al(2010) Mixed Integer Programming non linear real model type was used in this study.
Decisions on production, Transportation and Inventory issues and used
Heuristic approach as solution method for multi-period and single mode of
transportation with taking cooked meat and bakery as the field of study. Study
is deterministic in nature.
Ahumada and Mixed Integer Programming hypothetical model type was used in this study.
Villalobos(2011) Decisions on production, Transportation and Inventory issues and used
Heuristic approach as solution method for multi-period and multi mode of
transportation taking Bell peppers and tomato as the field of study. Study is
deterministic in nature.
Bosona and Analytical real model type was used in this study. Decisions on production and
Gebresenbet(2011) Transportation issues and took GIS- Route LogiX as Solution method for single
mode of transportation by taking Local food producers for this study. Study is
deterministic in nature
Rong et al(2011) Mixed Integer Programming linear real model type was used in this study.
Decisions on production, Transportation and Inventory issues and used
ILOG’sOPL-Cplex 10.2 as the solution method for multi-period and multi
mode of transportation and took Bell peppers as the field of study. Study is
deterministic in nature.
Yan et al(2011) Mixed Integer Programming hypothetical model type was used in this study.
Decisions on production, Transportation and Inventory issues and used for
single-period and single mode of transportation without specifying the field of

www.theinternationaljournal.org > RJSITM: Volume: 03, Number: 10, August-2014 Page 38

 study. Study is deterministic in nature.
You et al(2011) Multi Objective Programming linear real model type was used in this study.
Decisions on production, Transportation and Inventory issues and used E-
constrained method, Cplex 12 as a method of solution for multi-period and
multi mode of transportation by taking Cellulosic, Ethanol sector as the field of
study. Study is deterministic in nature.
Zucchi(2011) Mixed Integer Programming linear real model type was used in this study.
Decisions on production and Transportation issues and used Gen. Alg. Mod.
Sys. 22.5 With Cplex as solution method for multi-period and single mode of
transportation with reference to beef as the field of study. Study is deterministic
in nature.

Table 2
Performance indicators

Authors Vari Varia Finan Responsiv Marg Ener Fo GHG Temper Utilisa Qual Batc
ous nce cial eness inal gy od emiss ature tion of ity h
supp of the risk value usag wa ion control transp deca traci
ly total of e ste rates ort y ng
chai cost time carrier track
n s ing
cost
Bilgen
and
Ozkara X
han
(2007)
Zanoni
and
Zavanel X X X
la
(2007)
Azaron
et al X X X
(2008)
Dabben
e et
X X X
al(2008
)
Osvald
and
X X X
Stirn
(2008)
Ahuma
da and
Villalob X X X
os
(2009b)
Akkerm
an et al. X X X X X X
(2009)
Blackb X X X X X

www.theinternationaljournal.org > RJSITM: Volume: 03, Number: 10, August-2014 Page 39

urn and
Scudder
(2009)
van der
Vorst et
X X X X X X
al.
(2009)
Bilgen
and
X X X
Gunther
(2010)
Ogletho
rpe X X X X
(2010)
Rong
and
X X X X
Grunow
(2010)
Wang
et al. X X X X
(2010)
Ahuma
da and
Villalob X X X
Xos
(2011)
Bosona
and
Gebrese X X X X X X
nbet
(2011)
Rong et
al. X X X X
(2011)
Yan et
al. X X
(2011)
You et
al. X X X
(2011)
Zucchi
et al. X
(2011)

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