Selection criteria for planning cold food chain traceability technology enabling industry 4.0

Abstract

Failure to deliver safe and high-quality food not only causes costly food crises and foodborne illnesses, but also impairs consumer confidence and the performance of cold food chains. Industry 4.0 transformation in food traceability systems i.e., the transition from manual paper-based record keeping to automatic identification and sensor technologies, holds the potential to enable improved data transmission and self-monitoring to reduce food quality issues. Selection of these technologies to meet a specific need requires a measurement on how they perform across a range of criteria. An overview of traceability technology performance rating for criteria enabling industry 4.0 in cold food chain is absent in the literature. This article presents a summary of the traceability technology criteria relevant to cold food chain industry 4.0 transformation through iterative literature review and expert validation. The selection criteria are then combined into a quantitative technology performance matrix that can help users to determine which technology is the most beneficial for a given supply chain scenario.