Transnational food retailers expanded to middle-income countries over recent decades responding to supply (liberalized foreign investment) and demand (rising incomes, urbanization, female workforce participation, and time poverty). Control in new markets diffuses along three axes: socio-economic (rich to poor), geographic (urban to rural), and product category (processed foods to fresh foods). ...

Three different drying methods, microwave spouted bed drying (MSBD), microwave-vacuum drying (MVD), and hot air drying (AD), were used to dry diced sweet potato. The drying characteristics and product quality are discussed in terms of the drying kinetics, rehydration ratio, expansion ratio, breaking force (crispness), product colour, and retention of β-Carotene. As expected the drying rates in ...

Addressing an integrated decision-making structure for planting and harvesting scheduling may lead to more realistic, accurate, and efficient decision in fresh product supply chain. This study aims to develop an integrated bi-objective tactical and operational planning model for producing and distributing fresh crops. The first objective of the model is to maximize total revenue of supply chain...

This paper develops a dynamicmodel in a one-supplier-one-retailer fresh agricultural product supply chain that experiences supply disruptions during the planning horizon.The optimal solutions in the centralized and decentralized supply chains are studied. It is found that the retailer’s optimal order quantity and the maximum total supply chain profit in the decentralized supply chain with whole...

Fresh meat retail cases in 104 supermarkets across 5 regions of the United States were audited for product space allocation, percentage of space allocated to each fresh meat category and frequency of species among all stock keeping units (n = 14,863). The United States was divided into Mountain/Southwest, Midwest, Northeast, Southeast, and West Coast regions. Fresh meat categories for self-serv...

It is well known that fresh-cut processors usually rely on wash water sanitizers to reduce microbial counts in order to maintain quality and extend shelf-life of the end product. Water is a useful tool for reducing potential contamination but it can also transfer pathogenic microorganisms. Washing with sanitizers is important in fresh-cut produce hygiene, particularly removing soil and debris, ...

Demand prediction plays a key role in supply chain management of fresh agricultural products enterprises and its algorithm research is a hotspot for the researchers related. A new algorithm for demand prediction of supply chain management of fresh agricultural products is advanced based on BP neural network and immune genetic particle swarm optimization algorithm. First, the deficiencies of tra...

BACKGROUND Products under the purview of the Consumer Product Safety Commission are involved in a large share of injuries and injury costs in the USA. METHODS This study analyses incidence data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) and cost data based on the Injury Cost Model, integrated with the NEISS. We examined the magnitude of non-fatal consumer product related ...