# An Integrated Model for the Harvest, Storage, and Distribution of Perishable Crops
## 5 Conclusions  
In this paper, we have proposed two optimization models to support the decision-making of two agri-companies, which deal with perishable products. Their business concerns planting, growing, harvesting, inventory, and delivery management of fresh vegetables. They have a main contract customer, who has a set of DCs to be daily served, but they can also exploit the opportunities offered by a spot market. The first model aims to maximize profit of a single agri-company and concerns the integration and coordination of the harvesting, storage, delivery and routing decisions. Through a computational experience conducted on a set of real-life instances, it was possible to identify the most profitable parameter setting, in terms of the optimal number of days of the week to be dedicated to harvesting activities and the quality of service to be guaranteed to the customers. In particular, for the first company it was suggested to serve all the DCs relating to the main customer within a time limit of 10 h, while for the second to satisfy at least 85% of the main customer's demand. In both cases, the optimal number of harvesting days per week was found to be equal to 3. The second model instead allowed to explore and assess the benefits achievable from the horizontal collaboration between the two companies of the case study for what concerns the distribution activities. Computational experience has revealed that an overall saving on routing costs of up to 31-32% is achievable. At the operational level, a heuristic framework was presented and implemented in order to \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multicolumn{3}{c}{**Profit [EUR]**} & \multicolumn{8}{c}{**Profit Increase [\%]**} \\ \hline  & \multicolumn{3}{c}{Autonomy} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{Collaboration—\(Sc1\)} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{Collaboration—\(Sc2\)} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{Collaboration—\(Sc3\)} \\  & \(C_{1}\) & \(C_{2}\) & \(C_{1}\) & \(C_{2}\) & Total & \(C_{1}\) & \(C_{2}\) & Total & \(C_{1}\) & \(C_{2}\) & Total \\ I1 & 7142.65 & 7414.50 & 1.04 & 8.19 & 4.68 & 16.25 & 0.86 & 8.41 & 13.03 & 15.04 & 14.06 \\ I2 & 5332.24 & 1314.29 & 3.45 & 100.69 & 22.68 & 12.57 & 3.77 & 10.83 & 25.05 & 78.00 & 35.52 \\ I3 & 9363.34 & 3591.73 & 1.65 & 55.66 & 16.62 & 13.46 & 1.58 & 10.17 & 16.14 & 35.70 & 21.56 \\ I4 & 9598.83 & 4588.81 & 0.78 & 27.52 & 9.43 & 18.45 & 2.49 & 13.29 & 11.09 & 25.74 & 15.83 \\ I5 & 10,656.61 & 7734.92 & 1.13 & 19.41 & 8.82 & 2.80 & 0.34 & 1.76 & 12.13 & 15.09 & 13.38 \\ I6 & 6679.89 & 1981.08 & 1.00 & 37.98 & 9.46 & 9.36 & 2.27 & 7.74 & 13.48 & 52.40 & 22.38 \\ I7 & 12,762.68 & 4577.99 & 0.73 & 2035.52 & 9.51 & 6.72 & 8.57 & 6.80 & 10.36 & 217.77 & 19.35 \\ I8 & 4235.38 & 4508.95 & 5.08 & 64.68 & 35.82 & 61.68 & 3.11 & 31.48 & 39.79 & 32.08 & 35.82 \\ I9 & 15,224.41 & 3696.68 & 0.57 & 36.00 & 7.89 & 9.50 & 2.00 & 7.95 & 9.16 & 30.82 & 13.64 \\ I10 & 10,251.36 & 4542.15 & 0.67 & 17.45 & 5.82 & 7.97 & 1.67 & 6.03 & 8.01 & 23.91 & 12.89 \\ \hline Avg & 9124.64 & 4021.91 & 1.25 & 34.21 & 11.33 & 12.62 & 1.74 & 9.29 & 13.43 & 29.40 & 18.32 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 15: Profit comparison mouse and collaborative distribution under the three different scenarios. Figure 6: Comparison in terms of CO\({}_{2}\) emissions reduction between autonomous and collaborative distribution. jointly support the two companies on a daily basis. The results showed that horizontal collaboration can lead to an average increase in profit of up to 18.32% and a reduction in CO\({}_{2}\) emissions of up to 31.54%, when the two companies have similar bargaining power. Overall, horizontal collaboration represents an extremely useful and valuable solution, which can be applied in multiple situations and allows for an improvement in company economic parameters. Future developments concern a multi-product and multi-company version of the first of the two optimization models introduced. Conceptualization, G.G., G.M., V.S. ; methodology, G.G., G.M., V.S. ; software, G.G., G.M., V.S.