Polarica’s wild berries:an example of a required storage capacity calculation and where to locate this inventory.
INTRODUCTION
Polarica is a company in northern Sweden. It is worldwide distributor of variety specialty food items. During the lastcouple of years the volume of wild berries, mostly blueberries,has increased a lot. This expansion forces Polarica to consider investments in freezing-in capacity and cold-storage capacity. Industrial Logistics, Lulea University of Technology were engaged to help Polarica to decide if they really needed additional capacity and, if so, where to geographically locate it by conducted a simple heuristic model base on load-distance analysis. With this model, the problem is tackled and solved.
Q1: What capacity measure does Polarica used?
According to David Barnes (2008) Capacity defined as level of activity or output that can be achieved (by operation, facility or organization) in given period of time under normal working conditions. However capacity needs to related to organization’s ability to supply output in order to meet customer demand. In the same way capacity defined, it is difficult to measure. So do happen to Polarica’s where the storage capacity needs to calculate and to revise the inventory location. Polarica selling wild berries and others specialty goods where the nature of the goods is perishable where inventory control play important role in their operation management. The measures that Polarica’s used in operations are the freezing-in capacity and the total storage capacity.

To compare and identify which constrains affected the operation, the simple model was created. The model is based on an assumption of a steady inflow rate during a fixed time period. The time period can be seen as an approximation of the berry-picking season. In year 200X, the purchase volume of berries was 4,327 units; the total