Storage Logistics of Fruits and Vegetables in Distribution Centers

Abstract This study has as main objective to minimize the losses of fruits and vegetables that happen during its storage in distribution centers, using mathematical models to optimize the products distribution in deposit and to minimize costs referring to the storage of these products. Data of keeping quality of some horticultural products were taken from the literature. The mathematical model for optimization used a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) formulation. It was implemented in the software GAMS® and the solver used was CPLEX®. Simulations were conducted considering various temperatures of storage and the same cost of US 1.00 for every analyzed products (celery, lettuce, leek, plum, beetroot, onion, carrot, chicory, cauliflower, spinach, papaya, strawberry, turnip, cucumber, peach, bell pepper, radish, parsley, tomato and grape), aiming to minimize the costs relating to its storage. Starting from values of KQ ij(real) (keeping quality of product i in zone j in real storage temperature) and KQ i(ideal) (keeping quality of product i in its ideal storage temperature) and considering two zones (refrigerating chamber and external deposit) it was possible to proceed an analysis in relation to keeping quality of each product in function of the temperature. The results showed that the more distant the real storage temperature of a product is of its ideal temperature, the greater the costs with the loss of quality of this product. It was verified that the cost relating to the loss of quality of products has great influence on the total storage cost. It shows the importance of optimizing the storage logistics of these products, so that these costs are not still more expressive, what certainly occur without a tool for that. It was also verified that the order of products priority to occupy the chamber depends on the zones temperatures combinations, but fruits as grape and plum have larger priority in majority combinations of temperatures, followed by peach and strawberry. Papaya, bell pepper, tomato and cucumber have great variation in its priority and for smaller chamber temperatures (T c ), the products with smaller priorities were cucumber and tomato and for larger T c were cauliflower and celery. In that way, the proposed model comes as a tool that can help the distribution centers managers in taking decisions referring to the logistics of storage of fruits and vegetables in order to minimize total costs and losses of the sector.