Pig procurement plan considering pig growth and size distribution

Different pig size distributions in fattening units can prevent a pig procurement plan from achieving optimal results. Plans that fail to consider the pig size distribution and pig growth are not likely to be able to cost-effectively satisfy demand for each pig size. This paper demonstrates the use of a heuristic algorithm, pig size distribution, and pig growth to create a procurement plan. The performance of the developed procurement method is compared to the traditional practices of a company studied here. The results indicate that the company is likely to save approximately 9.52% of procurement costs by adopting the proposed method. The same problems were also investigated at an industrially relevant scale, and the computational time of the proposed heuristic was found to be reasonable. Thus, the pig industry is likely to benefit from the method developed here.

► Pig size distributions prevent a pig procurement plan from attaining optimality.
► A procurement plan based on a heuristic, the pig size and growth is demonstrated.
► The applicable procurement framework for pig industry is suggested.