A Solution of Freshness Constraint Order Batching Problem for Fresh Food E-Commerce

ABSTRACT

Influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic, fresh food e-commerce market in China developed quickly. Efficient solution for Order Batch Problem (OBP) could achieve efficient batching operation and then reduce costs and control risks. However, the OBP model proposed by the previous researches did not consider the characteristics of fresh food products such as the less demand of orders, the large variety of products, perishability of products and etc. Therefore, this paper proposed a model of OBP with freshness constraint of perishable food products, and proposed a two-stage heuristic algorithm to solve the target problem of the model. Our solution could improve the efficiency of the sorting process while ensuring the freshness of food products. © 2022 The authors and IOS Press.