Operation Optimization of Precooling Services for Post-harvest Fruits and Vegetables Based on a Multi-objective Optimization Method

This paper mainly studies the resource scheduling of precooling service for post-harvest agri-products. In this problem, we consider heterogeneous fleets that belong to different service types to meet the precooling requirements of farmers in the service time window. It is abstracted as a vehicle routing problem with heterogeneous service rates and time windows. This new feature increases the potential ways nodes can be combined in terms of time, enlarges the search space for problems, and leads to more challenging optimization problems. A multi-objective optimization model of mixed integer linear programming was established to minimize the operation cost and delay time of precooling service. In addition, a multi-objective optimization algorithm based on Epsilon-constraint and adaptive large neighborhood search is designed. Finally, a case study of the apple industry in Luochuan County of China is carried out to verify the validity of the model.