Logistics department in a company in the food industry

During my experience working for an artisan company that produces fresh cheese, I realised how logistics departments work in the food industry, all the steps that exist from the moment an order is received until it is delivered to the customer company and made available to the consumer.

First of all, in my company Granja Rinya, logistics and orders were part of the same department, because depending on the number of orders received, a certain number of trucks will be required to transport the goods to the customers.

Receiving the orders

With regard to orders, there were two types of customers.

• The first, known as platforms, are supermarkets such as Mercadona, Consum, Carrefour, Día and El Corte Inglés, whose orders are received through a web portal that collects all orders and goods receipts.
• On the other hand, there are the traditional shops in cities such as butcher’s shops, restaurants or even schools, which need the product to prepare meals for pupils and orders are placed by telephone.

Once all the orders for the day have been collected, they are sent to the production department which, in a period of 2 days, prepares, packs and prepares the product to be loaded onto lorries. It is at this point that the finished product is distributed to the two types of customers.

Delivery of products to customers

In the case of supermarkets, the distribution of cheese is done through transport agencies that collect the goods from the suppliers and deliver the product to the customer (most of these supermarkets have logistics centres that collect all the ordered goods and then distribute them to all their shops themselves).

In the case of butcher’s shops, restaurants and schools, the artisan company has a fleet of trucks that deliver the cheese to the customers. For this purpose, routes are designed in which customers have been assigned according to where they are located.

Finally, once all the orders have been served, the complaints period begins where customers complain that they have not received the products they ordered or that they have received them in poor condition, that they have received them with little expiry date remaining or that they have received them late. This is the responsibility of customer service, which is also linked to the logistics department.

The Short Food Supply Chain Trend

With globalization and the increase in population, the distance between the producer and the consumer has increased, with many intermediaries being added in the supply chain that makes it difficult to follow the treatment of the product, causing problems such as extensive food waste, food security, environmental damage, unfair distribution of added value and profits among chain members and so forth, as well as provide reasons for an increasing interest in the quality of food, locally produced food and food producing practices.

This has led to a trend called Short Food Supply Chain that seeks to go back to the roots to pursue economic, environmental and social sustainability, revitalizing the rural population and strengthening the relationships between producers and between consumers and producers, while gaining control over the sale price by reducing the number of intermediaries.

The problem with SFSC is that, since there are few intermediaries, producers must cover the marketing and distribution of their products, something of which they lack specialized knowledge, with the main problem being the spoilage of the food during its distribution. Therefore, SFSCs require corresponding innovative logistics solutions, like smart packaging to ensure the state of the food and the hiring of LPS and freelancers to whom to delegate the distribution.

Another way to solve this problem has to do with the relationship between producers mentioned in the second paragraph. The relationship between the producers takes place through alliances (or clusters of producers), where producers share resources with each other, including those for marketing and distribution. This is the case of the organic farms in Berguedà, with Salt de Colom sharing its facilities with the other farms to prepare the orders and send them together to their customers, many of whom share among all of them.

References

Sociedad Española Agricultura Ecológica, S. E. A. E. (2020, November 25). Vídeo d´experiències: Cal Pauet – Ecoavícola – dpagès – salt del colom – 7é simposi pae. YouTube. Retrieved March 27, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wUpWbASO5U

Todorovic, V., Maslaric, M., Bojic, S., Jokic, M., Mircetic, D., & Nikolicic, S. (2018). Solutions for more sustainable distribution in the short food supply chains. Sustainability, 10(10), 3481. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10103481

How the astronauts store food?

Hey space geeks! ( Maybe I’m the only one). We are here another week with a short but curious article about space issues, that can help us to deal with the lockdown.

We know (now) that with confinement there are also other struggles that we didn’t experience before, as how to stock all the food we need for a week in our little closets. So why don’t to learn from the best? If we talk about confined people it is better to go directly to the masters in this topic: The astronauts on the International Space Station ( ISS). Some of them have spent more than a year there, and stocking food for long time missions it’s incredibly difficult, in terms of space, expiration date and weight of the mission. I have found different videos that may be interesting for you.

First we have a deep explanaiton about how to prepared the food(mostly dehydrated food), stock there in the rocket and then in the ISS.

We have much more information on the internet, but and interesting presentation about how the food is stored at the ISS can be found here, where Thomas Pesquet, an ESA French Astronaut, explains how eat without gravity. The most interesting thing, concerning the subject, of the video, is to see where they usually eat ( and to be happy because in our confinement we have a bit more space than here), and where they store the food( you can see a deeper explanation, if needed here, by Frank the Winne, the boss of the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne).

In the last years they have also started to produce their own food, so it is easier for them to have fresh food and at the same time, it is better for the mission, as they can reduce the weight, that is the most expensive thing as you have seen in the first video.

Just to finish, in this video you have a short tour of the ISS, so you can understand and see the way they store their products in all the walls and even on the floor, trying to safe space from everything. In this case is not a short video, but if you have some time it can be interesting for you.

Some more information in general about this topic can be found here, where the NASA team explains all the process, since the food is on Earth until how they eat it at the ISS.

As always, let me know if you want more post related to the aeronautics or space field and if you have any doubt or something to add.