Use of Simulation Models to Study the Dynamic of Recall of Non-Conform Perishable Produce through the Supply Chain

The traceability allows, for each product, to sketch the manufacturing process through a system documentary, enabling to identify the operational structures involved, the products and the lots, to define the flows of production, packaging and distribution. There are researches that investigate the traceability within the firm, but little work has been carried out on the investigation of the traceability system over the whole supply chain. The supply-chain of fresh produce is constituted of many links: producer/grower, warehouse, packing centre, distribution centre, retailers and finally the consumer. Each of these is a system itself that interacts with the other components of the supply-chain. The non-conformity could occurs in each of these links. Because of processing plant requirement, storage requirements, and because of savings in the traceability process, often small size lots are merged together to form a large size lot at some points in the supply-chain. Larger lot size could imply higher risk for the consumers in case of recall of the produce and much higher recall time and cost for the supply-chain. When a non-conformity occurs, the time to recall the produce depends on many factors: lot size, lead time for information spreading from link to link, product transit time among links, product storage procedures and times, and the point in the supply chain where the problem occurred. To study with a system approach different scenarios for the recall procedure the authors realized a discrete event dynamic simulation model using Extendsim®. In the paper is described the model framework and one practical example.