Logistic benefits of innovative scenarios for fresh meat distribution

Logistic distribution optimisation can offer significant advantages such as cost reduction, shorter delivery time and improved customer service. The objective of the paper is the comparison of different scenarios in the distribution of products through the use of a cold room vs traditional shipping to supermarkets from distribution centres. The cold room is a cold cell owned by the distribution company located outside of each hypermarket that can be used 24 hours a day and is therefore available for delivery at any time. The comparison of the scenarios occurred for hypermarkets of a large distribution chain in the Piedmont region, NW of Italy. In the scenarios considered, fresh meat products distributed at 48 hypermarkets in the province of Turin and Cuneo were the object of study. In order to evaluate the quality of the system, a constant demand of 4 pallets per day of the product was hypothesized for each hypermarket. The results obtained show how with the cold room transports can be optimised in terms of the number of vehicles used, kilometres travelled, number of employees involved and therefore also fuel costs compared to the traditional case. Benefits imply lower costs and longer shelf life of the product available on the shelf that is crucial for fresh meat products.