Generation of alternative methods for managing raw materials to support decision-making in the dairy industry

Abstract

The dairy industry is a unique branch of the food production sector, where various decisions have to be made concerning the type and quantity of the manufactured products and the layout of processing lines. The literature on the subject is relatively limited. Therefore, an attempt was made in this study to support decision making in the dairy industry. The article proposes a general methodology for modeling dairy production systems which are characterized by numerous interdependent and concurrent processing operations. The proposed method relies on the object-oriented modeling technique and graph theory, and it can be used to model the equipment and layout of production lines. The method enables multivariate simulations of the production process involving a specific batch of raw materials. The simulated variants differ in the configuration of the production line and/or the allocation of raw materials (semi-finished products) to different segments of the production line. The tested model was verified and validated, and the average relative error of estimation was 3.27% for butter production and 2.46% for buttermilk production. The proposed method could support decision-making in the process of selecting the production strategy, including the assortment and quantity of the manufactured products, and the configuration of production lines.