Perishable Food Supply Chain Networks with Labor in the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic is a major healthcare disaster that has fundamentally transformed our daily lives and the operations of governments, businesses, healthcare operations, and educational institutions. It has elevated and expanded the role of essential workers, not only in healthcare but also in the food industry. The food industry has undergone major disruptions in the pandemic for reasons including compromised labor resources. In this paper, we develop a supply chain-generalized network optimization framework focused on perishable food. The model explicitly includes labor availability associated with the network economic activities of production, transportation, storage, and distribution in order to quantify the impacts of associated disruptions due to illnesses, physical/social distancing requirements, and decreases in labor productivity. Theoretical results are presented along with a series of numerical examples on a fresh produce product with quantification of a spectrum of pandemic-induced disruptions on product flows, demands, prices, and the profits of the food firm. We also show that including more direct demand markets for fresh produce can yield gains for the firm.