Crowdsourcing food security: introducing food choice derivatives for sustainability

Global food supply chains are unprepared for the increasing number and severity of the expected environmental, social and economic shocks in the coming years. The price-setting process of commodities is directly impacted by such shocks, influencing consumer behavior regarding food choice and consumption. Both the market and advances in precision agriculture drive increased production and consumption. However, there has been a lack of consideration of how consumer behavior could be harnessed to mitigate such shocks through decreased consumption and reduced waste. The SAPPhIRE model of causality was applied to design sustainable and ecologically embedded futures derivatives that could have a role in affecting commodity markets. Multi-agent systems were combined with artificial intelligence and edge computing to provide the necessary functionality. The impact of war in Ukraine was used to exemplify the design of consumer “food choice” derivatives. This resulted in a mechanism to bring aggregated acts of consumer compassion and sustainability to commodities markets to mitigate food security shocks. When implementing food choice derivatives, care must be taken to ensure that consumer food choices are rational and compatible with individual nutritional needs and financial situations, and that the legitimate interests of agri-food businesses are protected

Foraging supply chains: investigating disaster for improved food provisioning

Disasters such as COVID-19 and the Russia–Ukraine war are drawing attention to the provisioning of food during crises. The main concern has been quickly establishing a stable food supply. However, climate change and public health concerns are shifting attention to the critical gap in identifying the minimal considerations that would adequately address ecological disaster food provisioning. A meta-ethnography of 16 disasters in 12 different countries is employed to identify the activities and their supporting strategies that provide benefits to existing actors within food networks. Analysis suggests that public health, resilience, and sustainability stand to benefit from the identified practices. A conceptual model of an ecologically embedded minimum viable ecosystem for disaster food provisioning is proposed. Exemplar applications are provided for Tigray, Gaza, and Ukraine. The findings may be applied to disaster settings for the development of policy for culturally sensitive, equitable, and nutritious food provisioning strategies.This research was supported by a Research England grant administered by Universities UK International (project reference number 11155). Sandeep Jagtap acknowledges the support of FORCE (Centre for Food Preparedness and Competitiveness) at Lund University, Sweden.Ambi

Surviving the storm: navigating the quadruple whammy impact on Europe’s food supply chain

This article explores the impact of the ‘Quadruple Whammy’ consisting of Brexit, COVID-19, Conflicts (Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine) and Natural disasters on the food supply chain in Europe. This research adopted a two-phase methodology comprised of the e-Delphi technique followed by the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) approach within the context of these four identified challenges. The objective of this article is to analyse the challenges faced by the European food supply chain due to these four factors. The article examines the impact of political isolationism such as Brexit on trade, cost and border controls, while also discussing the effects of COVID-19 on labour, supply chains and the rise of e-commerce. In addition, the article examines the impact of conflicts on food access and availability and the role of international aid and assistance. The effects of natural disasters, such as the Turkish and Moroccan earthquakes, floods in Spain and Portugal and the Moroccan drought, on food security are also analysed. The article offers several strategies for taming the quadruple whammy, such as investing in local food production and supply chains, diversifying supply chains and trade partnerships and strengthening food safety regulations and standards. The importance of building resilience and preparedness in the face of these challenges is emphasised and the article concludes with final thoughts and recommendations

Enhancing Safety Performance in UK Metal Manufacturing:A Revised Framework to Reduce Fatal Accidents

Fatal accidents in UK’s manufacturing sector are expected to remain the same or increase in coming years. This paper has tried to combat this issue by adapting and further developing a previously defined Safety Framework for the Paint Sector, to evaluate the safety performance of a metal manufacturing facility. To achieve this, the original Safety Framework was updated to align with the current British safety legislation outlined by the British Standards Institution. The framework was based on a three-level multi-attribute value theory (MAVT). Upon reviewing BSI 45001, the Safety Framework was founded upon the concept of Deming’s Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) which is the foundation for the original framework, therefore, the first-level attributes remained consistent. The 13 attributes of the second level and 36 attributes of the third level were derived from the literature review and updated to relevant legislation. To develop the Safety Framework, the Delphi method was used. This included interviews that were conducted with employees and managers from either a Safety or Engineering background. The second part of the paper involved the improvement of the Safety Framework, based on the interview feedback. The main findings of the study revealed that the final Safety Framework has been deemed relevant for the Metal Manufacturing Sector by Industry Suitably Qualified and Experienced Personnel (SQEP). The majority of Interviewees deemed the Safety Framework to have a clear layout and easy to understand. The interviews and final Safety Framework suggested the importance of a company’s emphasis on employee welfare and health, in order to reduce accidents in the workplace. The originality of this paper lies in its application and validation of a sector-specific safety framework, contributing to the body of knowledge by offering a replicable methodology for adapting safety frameworks to other manufacturing sectors

Guest editorial: digitizing food supply chains: a path to ensuring food security

International Journal of Industrial Engineering and Operations Managemen

Guest editorial: transforming food supply chains: harnessing the potential of the digital era

The International Journal of Logistics Managemen

Unveiling the role of stakeholder involvement for digital transformation of Indian food SMEs

With the advent of digitalization, the economy of the world is quickly changing itself and Indian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are the front runners. This study sheds light on how digital transformation is crucial to support the growth, competitiveness, and sustainability in the present business environment, and how digital transformation is important to the SMEs in India. To encourage SMEs to take up digital technologies, the Government of India has been creating an environment that encourages such moves by launching several initiatives including Digital India, Make in India and Startup India. This paper studies the role of stakeholder involvement in digital transformation in Indian food SMEs. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used on survey responses from 103 food SMEs using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). From the findings, there is a close relationship between stakeholder involvement and technological advancement (β = 0.595, p < 0.001) and organizational and political factors (β = 0.709, p < 0.001) as viewed by leadership, which reflects multidimensional factors leading to digital adoption. However, stakeholder involvement does not have any significant effect on financial factors (β = 0.018, p = 0.87), financial constraints being a major barrier to transformation. Moreover, although technological advancement results in a positive effect towards digital transformation (β = 0.694, p < 0.001), organizational and financial challenges act as stumbling blocks altogether. In the case of managers, this study indicates proactive involvement of stakeholders, investment in employees upskilling and alignment of organizational goals with digital initiatives for the support of technology adoption. This information assists decision makers in estimating government incentives and public private partnerships to overcome financial constraints. Digital transformation for food sector SMEs depends on a coordinated support of stakeholders, policy and technological readiness as preconditions for long term competitiveness.Sandeep Jagtap acknowledges the support of FORCE (Centre for Food Preparedness and Competitiveness) ýat Lund University, Sweden.Discover Foo

Optimizing industrial etching processes for PCB manufacturing: real-time temperature control using VGG-based transfer learning

Accurate temperature control in Printed Circuit Board (PCB) manufacturing is essential for maintaining high-quality etching results. Automated monitoring using machine vision and deep learning offers an effective approach for this task. This study investigated a feature-based transfer learning technique for classifying temperature readiness in infrared images of the etching process. The captured dataset containing 470 ‘Production-Ready’ and 480 ‘Not-Ready’ infrared images of the etchant tank was utilized. Pre-trained Visual Geometry Group (VGG) Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) models, specifically VGG16 and VGG19, were employed to extract discriminative features from these images. Logistic Regression (LR) classifiers were then trained on these features to classify the infrared images. The performance of the VGG16-LR and VGG19-LR pipelines was evaluated on training, validation, and test sets using a 60:20:20 split. While both pipelines achieved 100% accuracy on the training sets, the VGG19 pipeline showed exceptional performance, achieving a validation accuracy of 95%, and a test accuracy of 99%. The VGG16 pipeline also demonstrated robust performance, achieving 96% accuracy on both the validation and test sets. Considering the dimensions and the overall efficiency of the pipeline, it was determined that the VGG19-LR model was appropriate for the captured dataset. The high accuracy indicates that transfer learning is suitable for categorizing temperature fluctuation in infrared thermography, as opposed to training a deep neural network from scratch. Computer vision and deep learning provide automated and precise temperature management during the etching process, leading to enhanced efficiency in PCB manufacturing.European CommissionThis research was funded by Research Development Fund, Grant Num-ber: RDF-21-01-028; Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Grant Number: SURF-2024-0355; and Project for Centre of Excellence for Syntegrative Education, Grant Number: COESE2324-01-07 of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. Guillermo Garcia-Garcia acknowledges the Grant ‘Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship’ with Grant agreement ID: 1010522842nd International Conference on Intelligent Manufacturing and Robotic

Implementation of relevant fourth industrial revolution innovations across the supply chain of fruits and vegetables: a short update on Traceability 4.0

Food Traceability 4.0 refers to the application of fourth industrial revolution (or Industry 4.0) technologies to ensure food authenticity, safety, and high food quality. Growing interest in food traceability has led to the development of a wide range of chemical, biomolecular, isotopic, chromatographic, and spectroscopic methods with varied performance and success rates. This review will give an update on the application of Traceability 4.0 in the fruits and vegetables sector, focusing on relevant Industry 4.0 enablers, especially Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, blockchain, and Big Data. The results show that the Traceability 4.0 has significant potential to improve quality and safety of many fruits and vegetables, enhance transparency, reduce the costs of food recalls, and decrease waste and loss. However, due to their high implementation costs and lack of adaptability to industrial environments, most of these advanced technologies have not yet gone beyond the laboratory scale. Therefore, further research is anticipated to overcome current limitations for large-scale applications

From failure to success: a framework for successful deployment of Industry 4.0 principles in the aerospace industry

Purpose The paper proposes a framework for the successful deployment of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) principles in the aerospace industry, based on identified success factors. The paper challenges the perception of I4.0 being aligned with de-skilling and personnel reduction and instead promotes a route to successful deployment centred on upskilling and retaining personnel for future role requirements. Design/methodology/approach The research methodology involved a literature review and industrial data collection via questionnaires to develop and validate the framework. The questionnaire was sent to a purposive sample of 50 respondents working in operations, and a response rate of 90% was achieved. Content analysis was used to identify patterns, themes, or biases, and the data were tabulated based on specific common attributes. The proposed framework consists of a series of gates and criteria that must be met before progressing to the next gate. Findings The proposed framework provides a feedback mechanism to review minimum standards for successful deployment, aligned with new developments in capability and technology, and ensures quality assessment at each gate. The paper highlights the potential benefits of I4.0 implementation in the aerospace industry, including reducing operational costs and improving competitiveness by eliminating variation in manufacturing processes. The identified success factors were used to define the framework, and the identified failure points were used to form mitigation actions or controls for inclusion in the framework. Originality/value The paper provides a framework for the successful deployment of I4.0 principles in the aerospace industry, based on identified success factors. The framework challenges the perception of I4.0 as being aligned with de-skilling and personnel reduction and instead promotes a route to successful deployment centred on upskilling and retaining personnel for future role requirements. The framework can be used as a guideline for organizations to deploy I4.0 principles successfully and improve competitiveness