The perishable products case to achieve sustainable food quality and safety goals implementing on-field sustainable supply chain model

Abstract

Perishable food supply chain required special attention concerning “timely delivery supervision” that may have quality, safety and environmental effects throughout with transportation duration aspects which leads to create economic differences of product value. Consequently, the development of food quality and safety has achieved significant importance. Therefore, the development of perishable food supply chain transportation network needed to more explored to fill the gap of timely supervision. Respectively, the multi-objective conceptual simulation model is developed to optimize the cost, environmental effect, quality and safety, and the appropriate transportation facility at field level connected with perishable food supply chain transportation system. In this study, perishable food lifetime variations are significantly structured as the Weibull random approach, and product perishability is supposed to be influenced by transport refrigerator application, which is assumed as the decision variable. Apart from, multiple vehicle types and multiple perishable food types are taken. The perishable food supply chain case is examined and, the associations and interrelations of all aspects of sustainability are studied, which is known as the multi-objective model of sustainability. According to the findings, by emphasising the cost factors for highly perishable commodities, the supply chain's environmental impact may increase by 108%, and the social impact may rise by 45% for transportation networks with field refrigeration facilities. Additionally, a 23% increase in economic awareness could increase supply chain structure design sustainability by 137%. Environmental impact and the unpredictability of perishable foods are also seen as important variables that might have a variety of effects on the supply chain's structure and operation. This study contributes the cold supply chain's sustainable development objectives while enhancing the quality and safety of perishable products. The results propose that policy makers can significantly decrease the environmental and social effects of the supply chain even without considerably compromising the cost aspect.