Pork production in Chile is concentrated in a small number of producers and ranks second in the world. In 2015, pork export was valued around $467 million. The variety of products has increased from 50 in 2007 to 400 at present. The growing Chilean pork industry is exporting worldwide but is also facing stiff competition from other countries. To maintain its competitiveness, Chilean companies were interested in developing a system that optimizes production planning, inventory, and storage operations in their slaughterhouses, reducing meat losses. Such a system had to be easy to use, accommodate multiple problems and time horizons, and allow the users to link with Microsoft Excel, a tool they were all familiar with. A decision support system was developed to minimize the costs of production, storage, and meat losses. This DSS reads several Excel files as inputs. The DSS interface is programmed in Visual Studio 2010, and the optimization (prescriptive analytics) models run in a commercial software. There are four optimization models in this DSS, and the user can choose the desired planning option for it. These optimization models are: • Daily Planning Model for Cutting and Packing Excel files are loaded into the DSS. This includes information about different cuts and pig varieties. This model helped decisionmakers to schedule the number of pork carcasses, the number of boxes and pallets to use, etc. The user can set the parameters in the Excel files according to daily production requirements. • Weekly Planning Model for Cutting and Packing The weekly planning model of cutting and packing allows users to estimate the shipment date per customer, the state of shipment (ready or pending) per customer, and the amount of products shipped each day. The weekly planning model is complementary to the daily planning model and allows rescheduling based on changes that might occur during the week. • Model for Chilling System Management This model obtains results from the daily planning model and schedules pig batches from the chill room to the slaughter room to improve the packing process and reduce downtime. These results can be saved as Excel files for further analysis. • Model of Storage Management Finally, the model of storage management organizes the products in cold storage according to their type. Results The DSS reduced the time required for obtaining production planning estimates, breaches of contracts due to production delays, and losses in product quality. The DSS reduced the time required to obtain a weekly schedule by taking the excel files as input and processing them. Previously, it required two engineers and more than three hours each week to prepare a weekly schedule. In addition, the DSS allowed swine companies to estimate the actual yields of production according to different cuts and pig varieties. The DSS also incorporates records of production inputs and outputs, making it possible to obtain yields by pig breeds and production analysis reports.

Questions for Discussion

1. Discuss the challenge faced by Chilean swine companies.

2. How did use of Excel files in DSS reduce the time engineers had to spend overall?

3. Explain the functions of the different optimization models of DSS?

4. Briefly describe the benefits of using DSS in Chile’s pork industr