In practice manufacturing companies have insufficient coordination and synchronisation between production planning and warehousing teams. The lack of coordination regarding production and warehousing decisions in the ordering strategy may result in unforeseen capacity issues at the warehouse due to misalignment between production plans and warehouse availability. These unforeseen issues can result in additional costs due to production line closure or last-minute stock reallocations. For this reason, it is relevant to study the effects of increasing interdepartmental coordination between production and warehousing departments on product flows between factories and warehouses in the supply chain of a manufacturing company. This thesis’ aim is to analyse the effects of coordinating the production scheduling department with the warehouse management department, against the most common practical case where the two entities hardly communicate. To this end, two optimization models are developed representing the warehouse and factory operations within a supply chain. The first model consists of a multi-period multiproduct lot size and warehouse optimization model for the decision on warehouse capacities while minimizing warehousing costs. The second model is a parallel non-identical machine scheduling model for the optimization of production schedules and the simultaneous minimization of the production costs. We compare the outcomes of the two models against a model where both decisions are integrated. The modelling decisions are taken in a setting with deterministic demand over time. An extensive sensitivity analysis aims to provide managerial guidelines for practitioners, to weigh which department can have greater impact on the total cost. Also, the integrated model can quantify the benefits of coordinating the production and warehouse departments. A case study at Kraft Heinz, a popular brand in the food industry, is used to provide a practical setting.

Online meal delivery platforms are growing worldwide. Nevertheless, the takeaway business model is currently the major source of plastic packaging waste generation. The alarming growth of plastic pollution leads to action among governments worldwide resulting in single-use plastic bans. A handful of start-ups offer reusable food container services. However, no online meal delivery platform has adopted such as service. The market size of these initiatives is therefore still small. There is no proof of concept on a larger scale. For this purpose, this study identifies, defines, and evaluates reusable food container handling methods in the meal delivery industry. We conduct a simulation study to measure the environmental- and economical performance of different container handling methods. Our experimental findings suggest that: (i) food container returnment by drivers results in the largest amount of cost- and emission savings, (ii) customer returnment to any random reusable restaurant results in a less controllable system, resulting in more redistribution events, higher costs, and more emissions, (iii) the hybrid container handling method gives two options for return which enlarges the convenience for return by a wide variety of customers. We thus conclude that the passive handling method results in the largest cost- and emission savings, however, the practical implications i.a. concept convenience remains an important topic for further research.