Modeling the supply chain network in the fast-moving consumer goods industry during COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years has raised serious concerns about the distribution of fast-moving consumer goods products, given the freshness of their use. On the one hand, the distribution of fast-moving consumer goods with multiple vehicles has led to maintaining the freshness of items at the supply chain level, and on the other hand, it involves the high costs of using vehicles. Congestion of vehicles and drivers in the distribution of items has also increased the possibility of COVID-19 transmission. The importance of the above issue has led to the modeling of a multi-level supply chain problem in the FMCG industry by considering the freshness of items to reduce COVID-19 transmission. The most important issue considered in this article is to send fresh food in the shortest possible time to customers who cannot go to stores and wait in line to buy items in the conditions of Covid-19. Therefore, the designed model provides the possibility for customers to receive fresh food in addition to reducing costs and also reduce the possibility of contracting Covid-19. Designed supply chain network levels include suppliers of raw materials, manufacturers of consumer goods, distributors and end customers. In order to optimize the objectives of the problem, including minimizing the total costs of supply chain network design and maximizing the freshness of items, various strategic and tactical decisions such as locating potential facilities, routing vehicles, and optimally allocating the flow of goods should be made. Since the supply chain network model is considered to be NP-hard, meta-heuristic algorithms have been used to solve the problem by providing a modified priority-based encoding. The results show the high efficiency of the proposed solution method in a short time.