  Supply chains are fundamental to the economy of the world and many supply
chains focus on perishable items, such as food, or even clothing that is
subject to a limited shelf life due to fashion and seasonable effects.
G-networks have not been previously applied to this important area. Thus in
this paper, we apply G-networks to supply chain systems and investigate an
optimal order allocation problem for a N-node supply chain with perishable
products that share the same order source of fresh products. The objective is
to find an optimal order allocation strategy to minimize the purchase price per
object from the perspective of the customers. An analytical solution based on
G-networks with batch removal, together with optimization methods are shown to
produce the desired results. The results are illustrated by a numerical example
with realistic parameters.
