In the questioning words of the 1955 Pete Seeger song: "Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing." Well, it seems Miami is where they've all gone, and it's not taking them so long, after all.
Research in the International Journal of Teaching and Case Studies has shown how Miami International Airport (MIA) blossomed into the main entry point for 90% of fresh-cut flowers imported into the U.S. The seed of the study used the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to analyze the way in which the airport optimized its operations to handle perishable cut flowers efficiently.
The work by Janaina Siegler of the Lacy School of Business at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, shows that crucial to its growth was addressing the need for a robust cold chain infrastructure given the highly perishable nature of cut flowers. Temperature control during transportation and storage is imperative, so MIA streamlined the unloading and storage in temperature-controlled warehouses that could cope with the hothouse that is the city of Miami.
Read the complete article at phys.org