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On the Generation of Alternative Solutions for a Perishable Food Distribution Problem

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Computational Intelligence Methodologies Applied to Sustainable Development Goals

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 1036))

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Abstract

Solving a perishable food distribution problem in a real world setting is a very complex task. This is due to products characteristics, and the requirements of customers. To ensure a safe, quality product with a desired service level, a bunch of specifications should be included during the decision/optimization process. Generally, it’s difficult to include all the parameters in the mathematical model. Thus, it’s desired to have a set of alternative solutions to select from, that allows the decision maker to consider different perspectives. For this purpose, the current work outlines the application of a Modeling to Generate Alternatives approach, that can generate a set of near optimal solutions, but maximally different from the best one. A General Variable Neighborhood Search GVNS algorithm is applied to solve the problem. We show through computational experiments how the proposed procedure allows to generate a number of diverse solutions in a single run. We also show how the consideration of a fuzzy threshold constraint may allow to obtain interesting solutions over a set of criteria calculated after the optimization process, for an a posteriori analysis.

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Acknowledgements

D. Pelta acknowledges support from projects PID2020-112754GB-I0, MCIN/ AEI /10.13039/501100011033 and B-TIC-640-UGR20 from UGR-FEDER-2020 Research Programme.

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Correspondence to David A. Pelta .

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El Raoui, H., Pelta, D.A., Rufián-Lizana, A., Oudani, M., Alaoui, A.E. (2022). On the Generation of Alternative Solutions for a Perishable Food Distribution Problem. In: Verdegay, J.L., Brito, J., Cruz, C. (eds) Computational Intelligence Methodologies Applied to Sustainable Development Goals. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 1036. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97344-5_17

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