Case Article—Optimizing Food Donation Delivery for the Nonprofit Company Logica&Co

Abstract

The article presents a case exercise that teaches students how to apply mathematical programming to a real-life context. The case deals with the management of the food donation supply chain. The case, using a project-based approach, proposes a realistic scenario that simulates the consulting interaction with a nonprofit company, Logica&Co, which acts as a two-sided platform connecting supply and demand. The objective is to define an effective strategy to collect and deliver food donations, using either bike or e-bike, from local businesses to soup kitchens, covering a semester-long timeframe. The form of the problem exhibits nonlinear characteristics, but the design allows for adjustable difficulty levels. Students can assess their performance during the class period thanks to an interactive offline tool, the SoS simulator, which is publicly available for download and can be customized by instructors. The case was proposed as a competitive group challenge for students of the bachelor’s or master’s program in management engineering at Sapienza University of Rome. However, given the embedded characteristics of flexibility, it can be easily adjusted for heterogeneous curricula of undergraduate- and graduate-level courses in engineering programs (this opportunity is extensively discussed in the Case Article and the Teaching Note). The students appreciated both the teaching methodology and the teamwork aspects and highlighted the utility of the SoS simulator tool