Due to the exigencies of new commercial trades, enterprises have seen forced to increment their competitive levels to become more efficient in the management of their limited resources.  In this situation, It is natural that the top managers in the organizations consider the transportation in general and physical distribution in particular as an important field to study and improve, seeking important cost reductions.  In this paper we present an study of the administration of distribution resources, focused in the right management of product dispatching, assuming resource limitations.  We propose some metrics that constitute, when used in a combined way, a valuable support for planning dispatching process, considering a typical delivery from one (1) distribution center toward “n” warehouses which can be considered internal o external clients.

The globalization has generated changes in world food consumption, demand for healthy foods as fresh fruits and vegetables have increased. The losses in the perishable fruit supply chains can reach up to 40%, the post-harvest loss in Co-lombia is mainly due to the inadequate planning and execution of the inventory processes. The problem is due to the high perishability of the fruit and its variability in terms of quality levels, which even under optimal conditions of storage tend to decrease. After reviewing publications in the field of inventory management of perishable goods, there is no research regarding fruit supply chain. Additionally, some models do not cover the entire supply chain, and they only focus in studying one or two actors involved in the chain. This article presents a management model of multi-level inventory for fruit mango chain includes functions decay and own losses of highly perishable fruit, a model nonlinear programming, formulated and evaluated in GAMS, which minimizes the total cost of inventory in the chain formed by a farmer, an agro-industrial company, a wholesaler, a hypermarket, a reseller and a retailer allowing calculate the order quantity and time of optimal replacement of fruit for each echelon.

Este artículo propone una metodología para la distribución de plantas en sistemas de manufactura flexible, basada en métodos cuantitativos para agrupación de familias, formación de células de manufactura y el uso de técnicas multicriterio. Respecto a la agrupación de productos, se consideraron criterios geométricos y se usó un modelo p-mediana modificado para la creación de células. De esta forma, la distribución de planta apropiada se escogió utilizando el proceso analítico jerárquico, evaluando diferentes alter-nativas obtenidas con el modelo Quadratic Assignment Problem, que considera el número deseado de células a formar y los coeficientes de similitud empleados para la agrupación celular. La metodología propuesta se probó a través de un caso real, verificándose la conveniencia del procedimiento en una empresa colombiana del sector metalmecánico.

Se presenta un modelo para la optimización del ruteo en la recogida de ítems perecederos, optmizando el tiempo de inicio de la ruta, considerando tiempos de servicio y pérdidas de ventas tiempo-dependientes. Se consideran además los gastos asociados al mantenimiento del producto refrigerado, y se prueba el modelo en un caso real en un proceso de recogida, descargue en deposito y venta de leche en un municipio de Colombia, comprobando la utilidad del modelo con el uso de escenarios.

Green hydrogen (RH2) can be used as a clean fuel and as energy vector. For this reason, it is a promising solution to the problems faced by the renewable energy (RE) industry. One determining factor for achieving its practical implementation is the correct configuration of its supply chain. This study compares different hydrogen supply chain (HSC) configurations. RH2 production will be by water electrolysis using RE in the Colombian Caribbean region, then, converted into Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carrier (LOHC), Cryogenic Liquid Hydrogen (LH2) or Compressed Hydrogen Gas (GH2), later, transported by trucks and delivered to meet the projected demand of the transportation sector. In the reference scenario, we found that the best alternative is to produce RH2 using an AEC-type electrolyser (alkaline electrolysis cells) powered by wind energy and convert it to GH2 at 350 bar for transportation and storage. Then, scenarios of demand, one-way distance and WACC were considered for projections between 2030 and 2050. The results showed that can be determined the one-way distance from which converting and transporting RH2 as LOHC is the best alternative and, also can be determined this limit for demand values, which allows us to identify the best configuration of the HSC.