Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for Fresh Food Distribution without Quality Loss by Delivery Route Optimization

Abstract

This paper enlightens the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for distribution of fresh foods by searching more viable route to keep intact the food attributes. In recent years, very hard-hitting competition is for food industries because of the individuals living standards and their responsiveness for fresh food products demand within stipulated time period. Food industry deals with the extensive kind of activities such as food processing, food packaging and distribution, and instrumentation and control. To meet market demand, customer satisfaction, and maintaining its own brand and ranking on global scale, artificial intelligence can play a vibrant role in decision-making by providing analytical solutions with adjusting available resources. Therefore, by integrating innovative technologies for fresh food distribution, potential benefits have been increased, and simultaneously risk associated with the food quality is reduced. Time is a major factor upon which food quality depends; hence, time required to complete the task must be minimized, and it is achieved by reducing the distance travelled; so, path optimization is the key for the overall task. Swarm intelligence (SI) is a subfield of artificial intelligence and consists of many algorithms. SI is a branch of nature-inspired algorithm, having a capability of global search, and gives optimized solution for real-time problems adaptive in nature. An artificial bee colony (ABC) optimization and cuckoo search (CS) algorithm also come into the category of SI algorithm. Researchers have implemented ABC algorithm and CS algorithm to optimize the distribution route for fresh food delivery in time window along with considering other factors: fixed number of delivery vehicles and fixed cost and fuel by covering all service locations. Results show that this research provides an efficient approach, i.e., artificial bee colony algorithm for fresh food distribution in time window without penalty and food quality loss.