A two-echelon capacitated facility location model for school lunch program

National school lunch program (NSLP) is crucial for providing healthy, inexpensive, or free lunches to children and it has been practiced in many countries for years. In this thesis, the distribution network of the national school lunch program (NSLP) for public elementary schools has been designed. The proposed two-echelon network structure includes local farmers, distribution centers, and food preparation centers where the total demands of schools are aggregated. A multi-objective mixed integer linear mathematical model has been proposed to determine locations of the distribution centers and the number of heterogeneous vehicles dispatched between centers. Three objectives have been considered: minimization of total transportation and establishment costs, minimization of total delivery time, and minimization of carbon dioxide emission cost. K-Means Clustering method has been used to determine locations of food preparation centers. The model has been implemented in the Central Anatolian region of Turkey. First, the model has been solved for each objective and then a goal programming model has been presented for different weights of objectives. The results of the case study has shown that six distribution centers and thirty-one food preparation centers must be established in the studied region to satisfy the total demand of public elementary schools.