Urban delivery of fresh products with total deterioration value

The deterioration of fresh products is often severe during fresh product delivery in urban areas, which is a significant challenge. We propose a novel model for the urban delivery of fresh products with different perishability. The objective of this model is to minimise the total deterioration value (TDV) and distance travelled. The TDV is related to the perishability, deterioration rates and quantities of different fresh products. A customised genetic algorithm is proposed to solve the model. The fitness value is calculated according to the preferential delivery of fresh products with high deterioration rates. Finally, a case study of fresh product delivery for a company in Shanghai is explored to assess the effectiveness of the proposed model. The results show that the proposed approach can lead to the highest drop of 11.8% of TDV compared to that based on the traditional shortest-path model.