Pallet-level monitoring enables a more intelligent approach to distribution—Intelligent distribution and FEFO inventory management (First Expired, First Out)—as well as providing the data needed to optimize end-to-end processes for maximum shelf life. Implementing these approaches can cut losses in half for retailers and growers.
Food & Agriculture
End-to-end Food & Beverage supply chain, including agriculture, processing, distribution, and retail
Freshness Wars — Part Three: Leveraging the Cloud to Improve Freshness
Freshness Wars — Part Two: Challenges and Solutions for Improving Freshness
Maintaining freshness of produce and other fresh products is challenging for grocers and their suppliers. Here we discuss why, and how some of these challenges can be solved.
Freshness Wars — Part One: Freshness, the Foundation of Competitiveness in Grocery
The quality of fresh food is the prime determinant of where consumers decide to shop for their groceries. Here we discuss why that is so and the role of freshness in competition for grocery market share.
Romaine Remains: Will the Romaine Lettuce E. coli Outbreak Hasten or Hinder Traceability In Produce Supply Chains?
As the saying goes, “never let a good crisis go to waste.” Ironically, the industry’s response to the recent crises of E. coli contamination of romaine lettuce may delay rather than speed up implementation of traceability across produce supply chains.
Blockchain’s Role in the Produce Supply Chain: Part Three – Specific Capabilities
Here we describe specific capabilities blockchain brings to a produce supply chain, such as tamper-resistance, automation/smart contracts, settlement, record of soft claims, auditability, and enabling uber-like spot markets. We also touch on why a permissioned blockchain is needed.
Blockchain’s Role in the Produce Supply Chain: Part One – Traceability and Blockchain
We discuss blockchain and three other approaches to achieving traceability, as the foundation for providing provenance assurance and improved recall capabilities. This includes a discussion of the impact of FSMA, industry standards, and networked SaaS systems.
Measuring Produce Freshness: Part Two – Meeting Customer Requirements
Improving produce freshness and quality requires a system bringing together the end-to-end temperature history of each pallet, knowledge of the temperature response of different varieties, capabilities to match each pallet’s condition-based expiration date with different customers’ requirements, and finally, prescribing simple actions to workers and supervisors to ensure the best match between remaining shelf life and customer need.
Measuring Produce Freshness: Part One – Ensuring Delivered Freshness
Freshness ‘blindness’ causes a lot of waste in produce supply chains. Here we explain the role of the Condition-based Expiration Date–a critical element to solving this problem. We look at what it takes to create a reliable and accurate algorithm that models deterioration of different varieties of produce exposed to different temperature histories.
Preemptive Freshness Management: Part Two – Cold Chain Process Mapping and Predictive Analytics
In order to preemptively prescribe optimal actions to workers across the produce cold chain, a system must reasonably accurately model the processes across the chain. The model becomes the basis for making predictive analytics, ultimately guiding the actions taken at each process step in the end-to-end cold chain.
Preemptive Freshness Management: Part One – Empowering Workers to Improve Delivered Freshness
Preemptive Freshness Management takes a proactive approach to reducing waste and spoilage in the produce supply chain, from grower to retailer. A process model that incorporates product characteristics, customer requirements, and resource constraints–informed by continuous situational awareness–provides field, packhouse, and DC workers with early warnings, clear guidance on goals and tradeoffs, and prescriptive corrective actions to maximize freshness and minimize loss.