Managing Your Supply Chain Pantry: Food Waste Mitigation Through Inventory Control

Abstract

In this paper, we report through case study findings that the food supply chain can be improved by implementing a proper inventory control policy. The case study involves an online retailer who sells predominantly food products. The improvement of the case company is shown via simulation in economic, social and environmental aspects. The findings indicate the role of supply chain risk as an obstacle in achieving supply chain sustainability, and the benefit of effective inventory control as a cost-advantageous and easy-to-implement waste reduction method.

Sustainable Inventory Management in Supply Chains: Trends and Further Research

“…The inclusion of multi-objective models is fundamental for practitioners and researchers, and the most widely applied approach to model such problems is mathematical programming, mainly with a single objective and solved by exact methods. So, developing multi-objective models that simultaneously incorporate the three sustainability pillars is essential [16,29,34]. A promising way to solve these problems is to develop and apply new algorithms and heuristics [26].…”

“…Here from the circular economy perspective, extending the options for value retention from the well-known reduce, reuse, and recycle policies to the 10R policies is suggested [46] by including the criteria proposed in this article. The most studied concept is "reduce" (R6) because it appears in 22 of the reviewed articles (see Figure 3) and is described to minimize GHG emissions [1,5,18,[20][21][22][23][24][42][43][44]47] and to reduce waste production rather than disposing of created waste [3,4,[25][26][27][28][29][30]45]. Ahmadini et al [41] incorporate both GHG emissions and waste disposal minimization.…”

“…Of all the available model approaches, mathematical programming models are the most widely used to solve the aforementioned problems (66.67%). Figure 4 particularly depicts: mixed-integer linear programming with six single objective cases [16,17,20,24,26,28]; multi-objective models [21,42]; multi-objective with fuzzy goal programming [39,43]; fuzzy multi-objective linear programming [14]; a multi-objective fractional programming model by Ahmadini et al [41]; linear programming with one case [40]; sustainable EOQ developed by Battini et al [3]; a constrained programming model overcome by Zhang et al [25]; a stochastic optimization problem [33]; a Markov decision process [37]; mixed-integer nonlinear programming [34]; two integer programming models [4,29]. Simulation models are also widespread (33.33%).…”

“…Two regression models appear: one by Ross et al [36] that describes a hybrid simulation-regression model and a regression model for the insight generation of managerial decisions by [15]. programming [39,43]; fuzzy multi-objective linear programming [14]; a multi-objective fractional programming model by Ahmadini et al [41]; linear programming with one case [40]; sustainable EOQ developed by Battini et al [3]; a constrained programming model overcome by Zhang et al [25]; a stochastic optimization problem [33]; a Markov decision process [37]; mixed-integer nonlinear programming [34]; two integer programming models [4,29]. Simulation models are also widespread (33.33%).…”

Reducing Food Waste at Retail Stores—An Explorative Study

“…First, the issue of poor sales forecasting and the disregard of influencing factors is highlighted in several studies (see, e.g., [17]). Second, inappropriate inventory control methods [17,22,72,73] combined with poor store operations [18,74] foster food waste. Third, large and unsatisfying assortments are problematic in terms of food waste [18], especially for product groups with short shelf lives [75].…”