An hybrid approach for a supply chain management in agro-food industries

In the agro-food environment, many particular constraints and criteria have to be met by the supply chain managers. In fact the seasonality and the fluctuations of the demand, the short life cycle of the used and produced products, and the irregularity of the primary products supply make the implementation of the classical production process and inventory control such as the Economic Order Quantity EOQ and the Just In Time (JIT) systems inefficient and unsuccessful. Therefore, we propose in this paper an hybrid approach "The extend kanban approach for the agro-food manufacturing" which is based on the cooperation between the principles of the JIT system and the statistical process control. Establishing "the extend kanban approach" in the agro-food reduces production cost by minimizing the production lot size and permits to maintain at the same time an authorized stock level which allows to take face to the eventual demand fluctuation.