Originality/value – This study extends the literature on cold supply chain management by
investigating cost and quality optimization in a multi-product scenario from farms to a retailer and,
minimizing cost by managing the quality above expected quality levels at delivery. The scalability of
the proposed generic function enables the application to alternative situations in practice such as
different storage environments and transportation conditions, etc.
Keywords Transportation, Product quality, Genetic algorithms, Fuzzy sets, Cost optimization,
Food supply chain
Paper type Research paper