A review of quantitative models for sustainable food logistics management : challenges and issues

Abstract

The need to further improve food quality and reduce food waste leads to increased attention for the development of Food Supply Chain Management (FSCM), which considers intrinsic characteristics of food supply chains besides traditional supply chain management (SCM) 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: Sustainable Food Supply Chain Management (SFSCM). 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 SCM to FSCM and now to SFSCM. In this study, we have reviewed literature on sustainable food logistics management to identify logistical key issues and relevant quantitative modelling challenges. The evaluation of the reviewed papers shows that towards obtaining sustainability together with considering intrinsic characteristics of food supply chains, there is a gap between the needs of the practice and the current available methods. In this study, we have also presented improvement opportunities for future developed models by revealing the aforementioned missing points.