Supply Chains: Planning the Transportation of Animals among Facilities

Pig supply chains conform differently depending on country; however, the industrial production of pig meat has led to an increasing specialization of agents taking part in the supply chain production. Nowadays, pigs are rarely produced in one single farm, the existence of specialized farms devoted to breeding, rearing, and fattening pigs being more common since this organization provides sanitary advantages against disease outbreaks. Management strategies such as batch management in sow and fattening farms add complexity to the production management. Pigs have to be transferred from facility to facility as they are growing and sent to the abattoir as soon as they reach commercial weight. All these stages involve either independent farmers or farmers integrated in some pig supply chain management organization operating with production contracts or cooperation agreements. This study presented the challenge of using a stochastic model for planning the transportation of animals among facilities in pig supply chains over time. The model provides an optimal schedule of transfers between farms, occupancy rate, and trucks involved. The integrality of several variables was relaxed, and further analysis was performed in view of inspecting the model behavior for achieving practical decision support. We demonstrated that we can achieve good enough results in few minutes and, so, practical use is feasible.