Deteriorating inventory model for ready-to-eat food under fuzzy environment

Decreased costs and enhanced customer satisfaction are two main objectives of SCM, and good inventory policy can achieve both simultaneously. Product perishability is a critical aspect of inventory policy. Ready-to-eat food products are very common consumer goods that are, in fact, perishable. The value the RTE food retains is, however, closely dependent on its quality. From the vendor's point of view, quantifying quality and remaining value should be a critical business issue. In consequence, we combined the traditional deterioration model and quality prediction model to develop a new deteriorating inventory model for RTE food products. This new model quantifies food quality and remaining value. We also improved the new model by fuzzifying storage temperature to simulate temperature fluctuation. The proposed model uses real deterioration rate data. Numerical analysis is conducted in a case study. Overall, the model demonstrates that high storage temperatures reduce profits and force shorter order cycles.