Abstract
This paper discusses a supply chain for harvesting and delivering fresh agricultural products from a single farmland to multiple markets under the condition of periodical flowering. We formulate a two-phase optimization model for selecting the optimal combination of transportation methods to maximize the total revenue obtained from the harvesting-delivery process of fresh agricultural products, provided that the products are supplied to each market in proportion to market size under a selected combination of transportation methods with corresponding delivery lead-times from a single farmland to multiple markets. We propose a graphical method for determining the optimal combination of transportation methods that includes flexibility for possible changes in prices of fresh agricultural products in multiple markets, using a multi-objective decision-making scheme to maximize the total sales income and minimize the total transportation cost. Numerical examples with real data on transportation costs available in Indonesia are demonstrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
