METHOD FOR OPTIMIZING FOOD MATERIAL TRANSPORTATION NETWORK

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a method for optimizing a food material transportation network, capable of optimizing the food material transportation network so as to achieve an optimal economical efficiency, and capable of evaluating the effectiveness of enhancement and improvement of transportation means against food material loss and supply deficiency at a demander.SOLUTION: Data of: the freshness deterioration speed of a selected food material; the maximum transport capacity for each kind of transport means; average speed and food material temperature during transportation; the position of a supply source and the degree of freshness deterioration at a carry-out time; the position of a cargo booking delivery center, the upper limit value of the degree of freshness deterioration of the food material at a receiving time and the increase value of the degree of freshness deterioration of the food material in the cargo booking delivery center; the position of a demander, its food material demand amount and the upper limit value of the degree of freshness deterioration of the food material at a receiving time; the sales price of the food material corresponding to the degree of freshness deterioration; and the transport cost and constraint condition for each kind of transport means are input to a computer. Then, the transport amount of the food material as an optimization variable and the total profit of whole food material transport network as an object function are set, and the computer is caused to calculate the transport amount for each kind of transport means at which the object function becomes maximum under the input conditions.