Integrated planning decisions in the broiler chicken supply chain

Abstract

In the poultry industry, the meat market requires a careful coordination of the broiler chicken supply chain comprising breeders, hatcheries, farms, slaughterhouses, wholesale, and retail vendors. Aside from the inherent challenges of coordinating a supply chain, animal husbandry systems face additional complex tasks. The lack of integrated decisions within the poultry chain could lead to a production plan that (a) does not comply with the biosecurity standards required in meat production for human consumption at the farms; (b) violates the production and inventory capacities at the slaughterhouses; and (c) does not meet the demand of customers. To streamline the supply chain, we propose a mixed-integer linear programming model that supports production planning and scheduling decisions in broiler chicken production facilities. In addition, we embedded the mixed-integer programming model in a rolling-horizon scheme to improve scalability and to avoid the myopic effect of time-indexed optimization models that put too much emphasis on a specific time period. We present the results of a case study in a poultry company in Santa Marta (Colombia), where we reach profit improvements that range from 7% to 57% with a reduction in inventory costs that range from 30% to 60%, while simultaneously meeting stringent technical, tactical, and biosecurity constraints.