Industry 4.0 Adoption in Food Supply Chain to Improve Visibility and Operational Efficiency—A Content Analysis

Abstract

Food can become unsafe or contaminated at any point from farm to fork. Customers and stakeholders are concerned about food safety and prompt delivery. Hence, there is a need for a visible food supply chain (FSC) which can be accomplished through innovative technologies. However, these technologies are expensive and take a long time to implement. Hence, operational efficiency, which takes into account cost, time, and waste, has become a priority for the parties involved in the FSC. This study aims to conduct a content analysis-based literature review to understand the impact of Industry 4.0 technologies in FSC in terms of visibility and operational efficiency. It is found that Blockchain, Internet of Things, and Radio Frequency Identification are considered to have great potential in the FSC. Although the FSC can tremendously benefit from other technologies, such as artificial intelligence, edge computing, and robots, they are not currently deployed in a practical or efficient way. This study also discovers how supply chain organisations can implement a technology cost-sharing system. Our study includes 16 emerging Industry 4.0 technologies and shows their impact on the FSC, as well as cost-sharing mechanisms. The findings of this work assist firms in technology cost sharing and selecting the right technologies for their supply chain. Finally, a conceptual framework is proposed to show how future work can be done to improve visibility and operational efficiency in the FSC using Industry 4.0 technologies.

Keywords

• Content analysis
• food supply chain
• Industry 40
• operational efficiency
• systematic literature review
• visibility