1,721,099 research outputs found
Sustainable food supply chain: Planning, design, and control through interdisciplinary methodologies
No full textSustainable Food Supply Chains: Planning, Design, and Control through Interdisciplinary Methodologies provides integrated and practicable solutions that aid planners and entrepreneurs in the design and optimization of food production-distribution systems and operations and drives change toward sustainable food ecosystems.
With synthesized coverage of the academic literature, this book integrates the quantitative models and tools that address each step of food supply chain operations to provide readers with easy access to support-decision quantitative and practicable methods.
Broken into three parts, the book begins with an introduction and problem statement. The second part presents quantitative models and tools as an integrated framework for the food supply chain system and operations design. The book concludes with the presentation of case studies and applications focused on specific food chains.
Sustainable Food Supply Chains: Planning, Design, and Control through Interdisciplinary Methodologies will be an indispensable resource for food scientists, practitioners and graduate students studying food systems and other related disciplines
Sustainable Development and Pathways for Food Ecosystems: Integration and Synergies
No full textSustainable Development and Pathways for Food Ecosystems: Integration and Synergies is a science-based reference which explores the roles played by agri-food ecosystems, their functions and needs, and the importance of the interdependencies among them. This book explores the relationships between food ecosystems, highlighting each entity’s role in transforming, preserving, and conserving the others. It is a vital resource of information on the ecosystems that surround the food supply chain and includes all processes, from primary production of food through consumption. The book covers the agricultural and farming phases; processing and transformation; storage and consolidation; packaging; transportation; the management of waste and losses; and the supply and conservation of enabling resources like materials, biodiversity, energy, and water. Sustainable Development and Pathways for Food Ecosystems: Integration and Synergies is a useful reference for academics, researchers, policymakers, and industry professionals involved within the agri-food sector management
Digitalization of Fresh Chestnut Fruit Supply Chain through RFID: Evidence, Benefits and Managerial Implications
Full text linkThis study provides evidence of supply chain (SC) management based on the digitalization of a fresh fruit-supply chain (i.e., chestnuts) using a radio-frequency identification technology (RFID). This research adopted the value-chain operation reference (VCOR) to assess the implications, issues, and benefits of the SC digitalization, and to explore how RFID can be configured regarding the VCOR blocks. Within this framework, the SC stages, processes, and operations were assessed using a tailored performance measurement system (PMS) including a set of metrics tracked, quantified, and evaluated alongside a monitoring field campaign. The results indicated that: (i) the benefits deriving from the RFID are constrained by specific organizational procedures adopted in operations management; (ii) the PMS Indicators of the centralized warehouse, balancing the inventory between the processing line and the distribution channels, presented the most significant improvements across the whole SC
Towards an awareness-based semantics for security protocol analysis
No full textWe report on work-in-progress on a new semantics for analyzing security protocols that combines complementary features of security logics and inductive methods. We use awareness to model the agents' resource-bounded reasoning and, in doing so, capture a more appropriate notion of belief than those usually considered in security logics. We also address the problem of modeling interleaved protocol executions, adapting ideas from inductive methods for protocol verification. The result is an intuitive, but expressive, doxastic logic for formalizing and reasoning about attacks. As a case study, we use awareness to characterize, and demonstrate the existence of, a man-in-the-middle attack upon the Needham-Schroeder Public Key protocol. This is, to our knowledge, not only the first doxastic analysis of this attack but also the first practical application of an awareness logic. Even though defining the awareness sets of the agents, a task that is left unspecified in formal works on awareness logics, turns out to be surprisingly subtle, initial results suggest that our approach is promising for modeling, verifying and reasoning about security protocols and their properties
A closed-loop packaging network design model to foster infinitely reusable and recyclable containers in food industry
Full text linkThe current public and private policies pursuing environmental sustainability targets mandate incisive management of packaging waste, starting with those sectors that use virgin materials most. Food industries and food supply chains adopt huge volumes of plastic crates, cardboard boxes, and wooden boxes as transport packaging, thereby representing a hotspot and an urgent call for scholars and practitioners to address. Whilst wooden and cardboard boxes are disposable solutions, plastic containers can be employed as infinitely reusable and recyclable packages but require complex logistic systems to manage their life cycle. Optimization techniques can be exploited to aid the design and profitability of such complex packaging networks. This paper falls within the scarce literature on the design of pooling networks for reusable containers in the food industry. It proposes a strategic mixed-integer linear programming model to design a closed-loop system from the perspective of the packaging maker responsible for serving a food supply chain. The container's lifespan, i.e. the number of cycles a package can be reused before recycling, represents a crucial aspect to consider when modeling such networks. Incorporating lifespan constraints within the proposed closed-loop network design model is the main novel contribution we provide to the literature. This model is applied to a real-world instance of an Italian package pooler operating with a consortium of large-scale retailers for the distribution of fruits, vegetables, bakery, and meat products. A multi-scenario what-if analysis showcases how the optimal network evolves according to potential variations in the packaging demand, as well as in the container lifespan, demonstrating how to lead packaging makers to the profitability and the long-term sustainability of the closed-loop network
A machine learning approach for predictive warehouse design
Full text linkWarehouse management systems (WMS) track warehousing and picking operations, generating a huge volumes of data quantified in millions to billions of records. Logistic operators incur significant costs to maintain these IT systems, without actively mining the collected data to monitor their business processes, smooth the warehousing flows, and support the strategic decisions. This study explores the impact of tracing data beyond the simple traceability purpose. We aim at supporting the strategic design of a warehousing system by training classifiers that can predict the storage technology (ST), the material handling system (MHS), the storage allocation strategy (SAS), and the picking policy (PP) of a storage system. We introduce the definition of a learning table, whose attributes are benchmarking metrics applicable to any storage system. Then, we investigate how the availability of data in the warehouse management system (i.e. varying the number of attributes of the learning table) affects the accuracy of the predictions. To validate the approach, we illustrate a generalisable case study which collects data from sixteen different real companies belonging to different industrial sectors (automotive, manufacturing, food and beverage, cosmetics and publishing) and different players (distribution centres and third-party logistic providers). The benchmarking metrics are applied and used to generate learning tables with varying number of attributes. A bunch of classifiers is used to identify the crucial input data attributes in the prediction of ST, MHS, SAS, and PP. The managerial relevance of the data-driven methodology for warehouse design is showcased for 3PL providers experiencing a fast rotation of the SKUs stored in their storage systems
Machine learning methods to improve the operations of 3PL logistics
Full text linkNowadays, the variety in the product mix, unpredictable customer demand and the need for a high level of service are crucial challenges in the management of a supply chain. Flexible processes are needed to gain competitive advantage and economic edges. This paper presents a data-driven application of unsupervised machine learning clustering algorithms to a real-world case study in the automotive industry. The clustering input dataset collects the data available to a third-party logistics (3PL) provider. Clustering algorithms are used to define product families for the assignment of the workload to the processing resources. Several clustering algorithms (k-means, Gaussian mixture models and hierarchical clustering) define different product families scenarios using different tuning parameters. The impact of each clustering scenario on the operations is assessed via a dashboard of logistics KPIs to identify the best performing clustering algorithm. The performance of each clustering is, then, compared to a logistic benchmark given by a capacitated clustering to identify the best compromise between a logistic-constrained algorithm with a long runtime and fast data-driven uncapacitated algorithm
Planning low carbon urban-rural ecosystems: An integrated transport land-use model
No full textAs urbanization gradually modifies natural ecosystems and affects environmental sustainability, urban spatial planning can be used as a tool to address to Urban Metabolism and meet sustainable development targets. The concentration of people in urban areas makes these increasingly requiring for primary products and services as food and energy, and the fulfilment of such needs result in significant carbon emissions. The inclusion of spatial functions as agriculture and renewables in the urban planning can address to this environmental impact, but would require support-planning tools able to explore new land-use allocation strategies within an integrated urban-rural ecosystem. In this paper, we propose an optimization framework for the planning of low carbon urban-rural ecosystems that integrates transport and land-use planning and cope with urban metabolism, involving urban mobility, food transportation, energy supplies. This framework contributes to the literature as it formulates a network between urban, agricultural, energy, and carbon mitigation land-covers and optimizes the horizontal carbon fluxes within an integrated urban-rural environment. In order to minimize carbon emissions by mobility and resources (i.e. food) transportation, the framework aids identifying trade-offs between accessibility and density over the spatial distribution of resource-generating and resource-consuming land-covers. Proof of concept is provided with a realistic numerical example, propelled by real-world data from an Italian region. The land-use allocation solution makes the exemplifying urban-rural ecosystem behaving as carbon sink due to the established green areas and the configuration of the spatial uses. A sensitivity analysis is finally carried out to assess the impacts of mobility and resources transportation on the spatial urban-rural structure and associated carbon emissions. It comes out that the optimal urban configuration to mitigate carbon emissions from transportation integrates urban and rural uses and guarantees accessibility to several functions as cultivated areas, renewables and green covers, responsible to provide food, energy and air cleaning respectively to dwellers
A simulated annealing algorithm for the allocation of production resources in the food catering industry
Full text linkPurpose: This paper addresses the trade-off between asset investment and food safety in the design of a food catering production plant. It analyses the relationship between the quality decay of cook-warm products, the logistics of the processes and the economic investment in production machines. Design/methodology/approach: A weekly cook-warm production plan has been monitored on-field using temperature sensors to estimate the quality decay profile of each product. A multi-objective optimisation model is proposed to (1) minimise the number of resources necessary to perform cooking and packing operations or (2) to maximise the food quality of the products. A metaheuristic simulated annealing algorithm is introduced to solve the model and to identify the Pareto frontier of the problem. Findings: The packaging buffers are identified as the bottleneck of the processes. The outcome of the algorithms highlights that a small investment to design bigger buffers results in a significant increase in the quality with a smaller food loss. Practical implications: This study models the production tasks of a food catering facility to evaluate their criticality from a food safety perspective. It investigates the tradeoff between the investment cost of resources processing critical tasks and food safety of finished products. Social implications: The methodology applies to the design of cook-warm production. Catering companies use cook-warm production to serve school, hospitals and companies. For this reason, the application of this methodology leads to the improvement of the quality of daily meals for a large number of people. Originality/value: The paper introduces a new multi-objective function (asset investment vs food quality) proposing an original metaheuristic to address this tradeoff in the food catering industry. Also, the methodology is applied and validated in the design of a new food production facility
Exploring strategies, technologies, and novel paradigms for sustainable agri-food supply chain ecosystems design and control
No full textSustainable Development and Pathways for Food Ecosystems: Integration and Synergies is a science-based reference which explores the roles played by agri-food ecosystems, their functions and needs, and the importance of the interdependencies among them. This book explores the relationships between food ecosystems, highlighting each entity’s role in transforming, preserving, and conserving the others. It is a vital resource of information on the ecosystems that surround the food supply chain and includes all processes, from primary production of food through consumption. The book covers the agricultural and farming phases; processing and transformation; storage and consolidation; packaging; transportation; the management of waste and losses; and the supply and conservation of enabling resources like materials, biodiversity, energy, and water. Sustainable Development and Pathways for Food Ecosystems: Integration and Synergies is a useful reference for academics, researchers, policymakers, and industry professionals involved within the agri-food sector management
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