Applying hierarchical hub location problem on perishable good distribution system

Freshness and delivery time limits are non-negligible features in perishable good distribution systems. Designing an appropriate distribution system can decrease the transportation cost besides of increasing goods freshness level. In order to get this purpose, developing a hierarchical hub network system with a refreshing operation in the network can be valuable. The first level consists of a complete network that connects the central hubs and the second one is in the form of star networks connecting the remaining hubs to central hubs. Demand nodes as the third level are connecting to hubs and central hubs in a star form. In this paper which is proposed for the perishable goods distribution systems, different level hubs provide refreshment operations for such goods that their delivery time exceeds the freshness time limit. During the proposed model locations of hubs in different levels and allocation structure of nodes to them are determined in order to minimize the total transportation and operational costs in the network considering of goods freshness. For illustration of the proposed method, some computational studies have been reported using the CAB dataset. The analysis shows that the proposed hierarchical operational hub location model performs better than classical approaches for perishable goods.