Quality-controlled logistics with internet of things: a conceptual framework

Food supply is a big challenge that our global society faces, and supply chain innovations are expected to contribute to a more secure, efficient and sustainable food supply. One of the promising innovations is to apply Internet of Things (IoT) to create the so-called data-driven food supply chain with qualitycontrolled logistics. To investigate the feasibility of such innovation, TNO and Wageningen Food & Biobased Research (WFBR) jointly developed a project1 within the NWO Dinalog financing framework to study IoT applications in the Fruits and Vegetable supply chains. The project includes 6 work packages: - WP1 IoT enabled Quality Controlled Logistics (QCL), including a conceptual framework on IoT enabled QCL, the state-of-the-art supporting technologies, and the SWOT analysis of this QCLconcept. - WP2 Business analysis, including the use cases for demonstration, the business case analysis and the business model analysis. - WP3 Design and Solution Development, including the development work needed to demonstrate a proof of concept in a real-life setting. - WP4 Demonstrations, covering a demonstration of the use cases in a maritime and a continental road trade lane. - WP5 Evaluation and valorization, make sure that the project knowledge is being disseminated among the target audience and support a broader valorization of the project insights. - WP6 Project Management, assuring an overall efficient execution of the project and organize and facilitate the cooperation between the consortium parties. Falling in WP1, this research develops a conceptual framework following a well-accepted conceptual framework development method to analyze the application of quality sensors in the fruit and vegetable supply chain. This framework analyzes added values for sensor applications at the level of logistic operations and the level of strategic distribution network design. A generic procedure was proposed to guide the analysis of the quality-controlled logistic operations in daily business practice. The added values of the accumulated sensor data for quality-controlled network design were also discussed. Other relevant issues including standard establishment, trust enhancement, and resilience improvement in the fruit and vegetable chains were also addressed.