Department of Agricultural Engineering
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Browsing Department of Agricultural Engineering by Author "Buah, I.E."
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Item Decision Support System For Sustainable Siting And Management Of National Food Buffet Stock Systems In Ghana(University Of Ghana, 2022-02) Buah, I.E.National Food Buffer Stock Company of Ghana (NAFCO), being the government’s emergency food reserve and source of raw materials for agro-processing factories, is established to reduce post-harvest losses, and stabilize food supply and price. These stated aims are very broad, conflicting, and non-profit-oriented, making the buffer stock systems economically unsustainable. This research, therefore, develops a decision support system where decision-makers can stimulate various scenarios to allow them to design a sustainable national food buffer stock system that is fit for its purpose. The decision support system comprises a risk assessment conducted on the operations of NAFCO, pseudo-p-median model, goal programming model and inventory model. The efficacy of the decision support system was illustrated through a series of simulations, where six predicted optimal locations for siting NAFCO warehouses were identified with an average transportation cost of GHS 1.7924E+6. The optimal network design of NAFCO warehouses was to reduce the cost of transportation incurred by the respective stakeholders. The research also investigated the number of grains to be purchased during every quarter, if NAFCO was to stock their warehouses with 100,000 tonnes of grain in the year to reduce the cost of operation. An integrated approach coupled with readily available data was used in stimulating the models developed. Furthermore, the research provides NAFCO with the necessary actions to take to reduce the risk associated with the unit operation of transporting grains from the farm to the warehouses and from the warehouses to the markets and harbour since this operation had a risk profile number of 648. In conclusion, decisions must be taken to revamp the operations of NAFCO with the mindset of reducing cost by adopting decision support systems in sustainably siting and managing their operations.