Abstract
Large-scale globalised food manufacturing systems have generated competitive advantages through economies of scale. However, these systems often show low environmental sustainability and resilience due to factors such as reliance on global food supply-chain actors and high emissions associated to transportation and storage. This article proposes increasing the sustainability of food production through a transition towards a ‘Distributed Localised Manufacturing’ (DLM) strategy. A novel assessment method is presented to evaluate the feasibility of DLM for different food products using nine distinctive metrics and a decision-support model to identify the most appropriate DLM system model for a specific scenario. An industrial case study is used to demonstrate the application of the novel assessment method. The results show that the DLM assessment method can accurately identify products that can benefit from the DLM strategy and potentially provide environmental and social benefits. In addition, the DLM assessment method demonstrated the ability to categorise key assessment criteria and support the selection of the most appropriate system model for a specific application. Finally, the method also provides guidelines to help to identify benefits, drivers and potential challenges that should be considered in future DLM implementations. In summary, this research presents a practical and powerful assessment method to support the implementation of a DLM strategy in the food-manufacturing sector in order to increase the long-term sustainability of food systems.
Highlights
The sustainability performance of food manufacturing activities must be optimised to support undisrupted supply of food (Wognum et al, 2011)
The following subsections show the application of the Distributed Localised Manufacturing’ (DLM) Method to SMACH, with the aim to elucidate whether a potential growth of their craft production of Pale Ale beer should follow an upscaling Centralised Manufacturing (CM) approach, or there is potential for a DLM strategy
This article has highlighted the need for novel food manufacturing strategies to increase the sustainability of the food sector
Summary
The sustainability performance of food manufacturing activities must be optimised to support undisrupted supply of food (Wognum et al, 2011). There is a lack of flexibility to rapidly adapt production volumes and FP recipes to fulfil consumers’ demands and overcome changing conditions in FSCs (Stone and Rahimifard, 2018) This is partially caused by equipment rigidity and design optimisation for the production of large volumes of standard identical products. The inability to react to rapid changes or disruptions caused by unpredictable factors is problematic These challenges highlight the need for alternative food production strategies to guarantee a sustainable and resilient food supply. A novel method is presented for assessing the feasibility of DLM strategies within the food sector by the use of distinctive metrics and a bespoke decision-support model The application of this novel method, namely ‘DLM Method’, allows improving the sustainability performance of businesses in the FSC. This article is structured as follows: Section 2 reviews the most relevant literature in this area, Section 3 presents the three stages of the novel DLM Method, Section 4 presents a case study in which the DLM Method is applied in a real industrial environment, and Section 5 provides the main conclusions and recommendations from this work
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
