Quantitative models for supply chain management within dairy industry: a review and discussion

The topic of supply chain management in dairy industry has received a great deal of attention in recent years due to its structural characteristics, such as long sequence dependent setup times, large changeover costs, numerous flavoured and coloured product types with the complicated changeover rules, limited shelf life restricting the storage duration and delivery conditions for each perishable raw material, intermediate and final product. This paper is intended to provide a critical review on quantitative supply chain models within the dairy industry. A number of problem variants are investigated in terms of: 1) solution approaches; 2) problem and model characteristics; 3) decision levels. Through the analysis of the review, a framework is developed for the existing literature to reveal major trends, explore research opportunities, and give several directions for future research.