A simulation-optimization framework for food supply chain network design to ensure food accessibility under uncertainty

Mengfei Chen; Mohamed Kharbeche; Mohamed Haouari; Weihong "Grace" Guo

Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2406.04439

A simulation-optimization framework for food supply chain network design to ensure food accessibility under uncertainty

Mengfei Chen·Mohamed Kharbeche·Mohamed Haouari·Weihong "Grace" Guo

View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

How to ensure accessibility to food and nutrition while food supply chains suffer from demand and supply uncertainties caused by disruptive forces such as the COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters is an emerging and critical issue. Unstable access to food influences the level of nutrition that weakens the health and well-being of citizens. Therefore, a food accessibility evaluation index is proposed in this work to quantify how well nutrition needs are met. The proposed index is then embedded in a stochastic multi-objective mixed-integer optimization problem to determine the optimal supply chain design to maximize food accessibility and minimize cost. Considering uncertainty in demand and supply, the multi-objective problem is solved in a two-phase simulation-optimization framework in which Green Field Analysis is applied to determine the long-term, tactical decisions such as supply chain configuration, and then Monte Carlo simulation is performed iteratively to determine the short-term supply chain operations by solving a stochastic programming problem. A case study is conducted on the beef supply chain in Qatar. Pareto efficient solutions are validated in discrete event simulation to evaluate the performance of the designed supply chain in various realistic scenarios and provide recommendations for different decision-makers.

Explore related subjects

econ.GN q-fin.EC

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

Mengfei Chen, Mohamed Kharbeche, Mohamed Haouari, Weihong "Grace" Guo. 2024-06-13. A simulation-optimization framework for food supply chain network design to ensure food accessibility under uncertainty. https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.04439

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Local Media and the Shaping of Social Norms: Evidence from the Ebola outbreak

Media's influence on norms and behavior is widely recognized. Less is known about the role played by media being local. I examine this in a high-stakes context, the Ebola outbreak in Guinea. I exploit quasi-random variation in access to radio and the timing of a public-health campaign aired on community radio. I find that 12-17% of Ebola cases could have been prevented if places with access to a neighboring community radio station had instead had their own. Impacts are driven by radio being local rather than by ethno-linguistic belonging. Local media facilitates coordination in behaviors observed and sanctioned locally.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2026

Productivity Shocks and Input Misallocation: A Decomposition

This paper asks how much input misallocation productivity uncertainty generates and at which stage of input decisions it arises. I separate revenue productivity by when each component is revealed and trace each into the gap between an input's marginal revenue product and its price. In six European countries, shocks revealed after an input is committed account for 20 percent of capital gap dispersion and 5 percent of labor gap dispersion. An unanticipated one percent rise in productivity raises the capital gap by 0.92 percent and the labor gap by 0.19 percent, because most of the shock passes into the wage.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2026

When Do Type-Specific Wages Buffer Distributional Incidence in TANK?

When do relative wages buffer the unequal incidence of aggregate shocks? I derive a consumption-gap decomposition and a present-value condition for partial offset in a TANK model. An extension separates wage-setting demand elasticity from substitution between labor segments and allows each segment to contain both financial types. With a zero inherited wage gap and a same-sign discounted wedge, substitution above one gives offsetting earnings reallocation; substitution below one gives amplification. The channel disappears when financial types have identical segment exposure. Numerical experiments assess these mechanisms, shock persistence, policy feedback, and aggregate-IRF matching. In the nested perfect-alignment monetary benchmark, the peak consumption gap is about two-fifths smaller under type-specific wages than under the common-wage closure. These are conditional model comparisons, not empirical effect estimates or welfare rankings.

econ.GN↗