Decision support system for designing sustainable multi-stakeholder networks of grain storage facilities in developing countries

Abstract

Governments in developing countries often face the daunting task of designing a network of grain storage facilities to simultaneously benefit the various stakeholders (farmers, market traders, exporters, etc.) in the grain supply chain irrespective of the conflicting objectives of these stakeholders. Existing decision support systems either require data that are unavailable in most developing countries or have objectives irrelevant in the context of developing countries. This paper therefore develops a decision support system that integrates transportation, pseudo p-median, forecasting and goal programming models to optimally design networks of grain storage facilities to reduce the transportation cost of respective stakeholders. The effectiveness of the proposed decision support system has been demonstrated by comparing phantom networks developed with the decision support system to the Government of Ghana’s network of 48 grain storage facilities.