Packing-allocation system design for non-standard agricultural products subscription service

Most Japanese farmers send their harvested agricultural products to the Japan Agricultural Cooperative (JA) to focus on cultivation activities and to ensure a stable income. However, many nonstandard agricultural products are returned to farmers because of the strict purchasing standards set by the JA. For fruits such as peaches, colour, sweetness, and shape are strictly controlled by sorting machines and visual inspection. Consequently, problems such as decreased income for agricultural producers and increased food loss owing to waste disposal are increasing. In this study, we focus on a subscription service on a D2C platform for selling nonstandard peaches. Attributes such as colour and fruit spots were quantified using new sorting machines. To improve customer satisfaction, a packing and allocation system for peaches that maximises the value of each package while minimising the difference in product value between packages was designed and verified under different distributions of quantity and quality.