Food supply chain management: systems, implementations, and future research

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-09-2016-0391
Published date16 October 2017
Pages2085-2114
Date16 October 2017
AuthorRay Zhong,Xun Xu,Lihui Wang
Subject MatterInformation & knowledge management,Information systems,Data management systems,Knowledge management,Knowledge sharing,Management science & operations,Supply chain management,Supply chain information systems,Logistics,Quality management/systems
Food supply chain management:
systems, implementations, and
future research
Ray Zhong and Xun Xu
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, and
Lihui Wang
Department of Production Engineering,
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the food supply chain management (FSCM) in terms of
systems and implementations so that observations and lessons from this research could be useful for
academia and industrial practitioners in the future.
Design/methodology/approach A systematical and hierarchical framework is proposed in this paper to
review the literature. Categorizations and classifications are identified to organize this paper.
Findings This paper reviews total 192 articles related to the data-driven systems for FSCM. Currently,
there is a dramatic increase of research papers related to this topic. Looking at thegeneral interests on FSCM,
research on this topic can be expected to increase in the future.
Research limitations/implications This paper only selected limited number of papers which are
published in leading journals or with high citations. For simplicity without generality, key findings and
observations are significant from this research.
Practical implications Some ideas from this paper could be expanded into other possible domains so that
involved parties are able to be inspired for enriching the FSCM. Future implementations are useful for
practitioners to conduct IT-based solutions for FSCM.
Social implications As the increasing of digital devices in FSCM, large number of data will be used for
decision-makings. Data-driven systems for FSCM will be the future for a more sustainable food supply chain.
Originality/value This is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive review on FSCM from the view of
data-driven IT systems.
Keywords Case studies, Food supply chain management, Review, Data-driven systems,
Implementations, IT systems
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
Food industry plays an important role in providing basics and necessities for supporting
various human activities and behaviors (Cooper and Ellram, 1993). Once harvested or
produced, the food should be stored, delivered, and retailed so that they could reach to the
final customers by due date. It was reported that about one-third of the produced food has
been abandoned or wasted yearly (approximately 1.3 billion tons) (Manning et al., 2006).
Two-third of the wasted food (about 1 billion tons) is occurred in supply chain like
harvesting, shipping and storage (Fritz and Schiefer, 2008). Take fruit and vegetables for
example, such perishable food was wasted by 492 million tons worldwide in 2011 due to the
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 117 No. 9, 2017
pp. 2085-2114
Emerald Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-09-2016-0391
Received 22 September 2016
Revised 11 November 2016
Accepted 25 December 2016
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-5577.htm
© Ray Zhong, Xun Xu and Lihui Wang. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is
published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce,
distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial & non-commercial
purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this
licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
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Food supply
chain
management
inefficient and ineffective food supply chain management (FSCM) (Gustavsson et al., 2011).
Therefore, FSCM is significant to save our food.
FSCM has been coined to depictthe activities or operations from production, distribution,
and consumption so as to keep the safety and quality of various food under efficient and
effectivemodes (Marsden et al., 2000; Blandonet al., 2009). The differencesof FSCM from other
supply chains such as furniture logistics and supply chain management are the importance
reflected by factors like food quality, safety, and freshness within limited time, which make
the underlyingsupply chain more complex and difficultto manage (La Scalia et al., 2016). The
complexities are significant in the case of perishable products where their traversal time
through FSCM and the use warehouses or buffers against demand and transportation
variability are severely limited. Additionally, as the coordination from worldwide scale, the
complexities have been compounded, thus, the focus from a single echelon such as food
productionwas shifted to the efficiencyand effectiveness of holisticsupply chain. That means
the resources like trucks, warehouse facilities, transportation routes, and workers within the
food supply chain will be used efficiently so as to ensure the foodquality and safety through
effective efforts such as optimization decisions (Wu, Liao, Tseng and Chiu, 2016).
As the development of cutting-edge technologies, FSCM has been widely recognized both
by practitioners and academia. Information technology (IT) has brought dramatic
improvements to FSCM in terms of automatic food processing like cleansing and packing as
well as freshness storage (King and Phumpiu, 1996; Caswell et al., 1998; Wang et al., 2015).
However, the discipline of FSCM is still incapable of addressing many practical real-life
challenges satisfactorily. The reasons for the inadequacy are attributed to low operational
levels from farmers (Folkerts and Koehorst, 1997), information obstacle among different
stakeholders (Caswell et al., 1998), and inefficient decision-making systems/models
(Ahumada and Villalobos, 2009). Strategic decision-makers require comprehensive models
to increase total profitability while data input into those models are usually ignored in most
of traditional myopic models. In order to address current challenges, it is necessary to
investigate better approaches to accommodate emerging global situations after taking a
critical look at the current FSCM practices and conditions.
This paper selects total 192 articles from 1993 to 2017 by searching the key word
FSCMin Google Scholar (until November 2016). Special concentration is placed upon the
data-driven IT systems which are used for facilitating the FSCM with particular aims of
re-designing and re-rationalizing current supply chain to a globally integrated fashion for
food industry. Among these articles, there are seven reports from website, 25 papers are
case studies, and the others are typical research papers related to FSCM. Most of these
reviewed papers are from leading journals such as International Journal of Production
Economics (19), European Journal of Operational Research (4), Journal of Cleaner Production
(10), Food Control (13), Supply Chain Management: An International Journal (7), Journal of
Operations Management (3), British Food Journal (4), etc. Figure 1 presents the selected
papers in a yearly view. As demonstrated, there is only a few studies about data-driven IT
systems in FSCM in early 1990s. Then, the related papers are fluctuated slightly from 2000
to 2014. Currently, as showing from the prediction curve, there is a dramatic increase of
research papers related to this topic. Looking at the general interests on FSCM, the quantity
can be expected to increase in the future.
This paper categorizes related topics in a hierarchical organization. Figure 2 presents
the scope of the review that each focus is dissected to organize this paper. Section 2
talks about the supply chain management for food industry that covers three themes such
as frameworks, models, and worldwide movement. Section 3 presents two major IT
systems traceability systems and decision-making systems for FSCM. Section 4
demonstrates FSCM implementations in terms of reported cases and data-driven
applications. Section 5 summarizes the current challenges and future perspectives in
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