Today, distributing high quality perishable foods is one of the challenging issues in food industry. This paper introduces a deterministic vehicle routing problem model with multiple middle depots and proposes the freshness of perishable foods as a new concept to obtain optimal delivery routes. For the proposed mathematical model, profit maximization of delivering the product, minimization of the transportation costs and vehicle traveling time, and maximum level of delivered product perishability (loss of freshness) are considered. GAMS software is implemented to show the authority of the model. Furthermore, genetic algorithm (GA) has been developed to solve the model for large size instances. Several problems are tested in order to compare the exact and the GA solutions.

In this paper, an alternative version of the fuzzy PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations) method is proposed. Differently from other studies, preference functions used in PROMETHEE method are handled in terms of fuzzy distances between alternatives with respect to each criterion. In order to indicate the applicability of this method, the method is applied for a supplier selection problem in the literature. Ranking results are similar obtained by TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) and fuzzy ELECTRE (ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité) methods. The implementation of the proposed method indicates that the amount of computations is decreased and decision makers can easily reach to desirable solution.

Nowadays, selecting the most appropriate location for hub is one of the most significant issues not only in road, rail and air transportations, but also in maritime. Transshipment is the fastest growing segment of the marine container market; it increases traffic flow of marine container and scope of this type of marine carriage, accordingly. In this way, determining a movement loop for the voyages of a shipping company, probes identification of container hub ports by considering different operational factors including distance to the destinations. The focus of this paper is to locate the best location for container transshipment hub in southern seas of Iran. In this paper, an MCDM model is proposed for evaluating and selecting the marine container transshipment hub port. Finally, the utilization of the proposed model is demonstrated with a real case study of Iranian main ports. The results show that the MCDM model can be used to explain the evaluation and decision-making procedures of a proper marine container hub location selection.

This paper deals with the co-ordination of a single producer, multi distributors and multi retailers for a supply chain management to get the maximum profit at minimum investment when shortages is permitted at the retailer‘s end and they are the partially backlogged. Most previous studies on supply chain have dealt with a moderately simpler chain with a single producer and a single buyer. The requirement of the producer is directly proportional to demand of the distributor, while the demand of the distributor is dependent on retailers’ requirement. This passes on rationally to the whole supply chain. The proposed model of this paper considers deteriorating items where the deterioration rate is considered as constant.

Traditional economic production quantity (EPQ) model assumes that the production products are perfect. However, this assumption does not hold for many real production systems due to several weaknesses. This paper considers production inventory model with defective items for deteriorating items. In this paper, production rate is considered to be greater than demand rate. Mathematical model is developed for finding optimal order quantity, cycle time and total profit. Moreover, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the proposed model. Next, sensitivity analysis is established to demonstrate the model developed. Finally, some conclusions and future research directions are proposed.

Authors developed a two-period buyback pricing model which shows a competition between independent repair shop, third party remanufacturer (TPR) and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) for market share in spare parts business after the end of warranty period. Remanufacturing is a profitable option for OEM rather than producing new parts after finishing the warranty period for satisfying the demand of spare parts. OEM acquires damaged/broken parts from local independent repair shop to remanufacture those parts. But if there existed any Third Party Remanufacturer (TPR) then it would lead competition and would decrease the market share of OEM in sales of spare parts. TPR is basically independent remanufacturer. OEM has no control over the activity of the TPR for selling remanufactured spare parts after finishing warranty period of the products. In this paper, authors considered a supply chain model, where independent repair shop is responsible for handling the repair process and both OEM and TPR are remanufacturing spare parts. Repair shop may procure spare parts from both OEM and TPR. A discount is given on the price of the spare parts by TPR which attracts the customers. Repair shop also tries to sell repaired parts at an attractive discounted price. Both TPR and OEM need to collect broken/damaged parts to remanufacture them for maintaining an inventory of spare parts. This paper aimed to develop a deterministic framework for finding optimal buyback price for the OEM and the impact of different parameters on the profitability of spare parts management for individual players of supply chain management.