Freshness preservation, shipment planning, and reduction of transportation costs are particularly challenging for production areas far from markets. For example, the chrysanthemum production sites in the Okinawa Prefecture, being located far from the market areas on the seaside, require planning to preserve their products' freshness and, consequently, a precise shipment schedule. Moreover, the chrysanthemum is normally sold at a low price, and thus reducing transportation costs is particularly challenging. The present research examines a case study of the Okinawa Floricultural Cooperative Association, with the goal of clarifying how it is addressing these problems. The association is building a logistics system that combines air and shipping transport. Shipping transport can decrease transportation costs, but does not address the problems of preserving freshness and planning shipments. Therefore, refrigeration equipment has been introduced to address the problem of preserving freshness. Given the challenges in shipping transport such as a lack of flexibility and complications in planning shipments, the recommended alternative is air transport, characterized by frequency and high speed.
