Packaging and food waste preventing strategies for sustainable food supply chain networks

The central aim of this dissertation is to introduce innovative methods, models, and tools to enhance the overall performance of supply chains responsible for handling perishable products. This concept of improved performance encompasses several critical dimensions, including enhanced efficiency in supply chain operations, product quality, safety, sustainability, waste generation minimization, and compliance with norms and regulations. The research is structured around three specific research questions that provide a solid foundation for delving into and narrowing down the array of potential solutions. These questions primarily concern enhancing the overall performance of distribution networks for perishable products and optimizing the package hierarchy, extending to unconventional packaging solutions. To address these research questions effectively, a well-defined research framework guides the approach. However, the dissertation adheres to an overarching methodological approach that comprises three fundamental aspects. The first aspect centers on the necessity of systematic data sampling and categorization, including identifying critical points within food supply chains. The data collected in this context must then be organized within a customized data structure designed to feed both cyber-physical and digital twins to quantify and analyze supply chain failures with a preventive perspective.

Export Supply Chain Organization and Food Safety and Quality Standards: a case study of the Moroccan Fruit and Vegetable Sector

Agri-food supply chains extend beyond national boundaries, partially facilitated by a policy environment that encourages more liberal international trade. Rising concentration within the downstream sector has driven a shift towards “buyer-driven” global value chains (GVCs) extending internationally with global sourcing and the emergence of multinational key economic players that compete with increase emphasis on product quality attributes. Agri-food systems are thus increasingly governed by a range of inter-related public and private standards, both of which are becoming a priori mandatory, especially in supply chains for high-value and quality-differentiated agri-food products and tend to strongly affect upstream agricultural practices, firms’ internal organization and strategic behaviour and to shape the food chain organization. Notably, increasing attention has been given to the impact of SPS measures on agri-food trade and notably on developing countries’ export performance. Food and agricultural trade is the vital link in the mutual dependency of the global trade system and developing countries. Hence, developing countries derive a substantial portion of their income from food and agricultural trade. In Morocco, fruit and vegetable (especially fresh) are the primary agricultural export. Because of the labor intensity, this sector (especially citrus and tomato) is particularly important in terms of income and employment generation, especially for the female laborers hired in the farms and packing houses. Hence, the emergence of agricultural and agrifood product safety issues and the subsequent tightening of market requirements have challenged mutual gains due to the lack of technical and financial capacities of most developing countries.

All'origine dello squilibrio di potere negoziale della parte agricola nella food supply chain: il caso della suinicoltura in Emilia-Romagna

Il settore suinicolo ricopre un ruolo rilevante nel contesto nazionale, con ricadute economiche e sociali di primaria importanza in varie regioni. Tuttavia da alcuni anni il settore si trova in crisi a causa dell’instabilità dei mercati internazionali, dello scarso coordinamento tra gli attori della filiera, della progressiva riduzione della redditività dei prodotti trasformati a Denominazione di Origine, della mancata valorizzazione dei tagli di carne fresca, nonché della difficoltà di aggredire i mercati esteri. Altre criticità riguardano la distribuzione del valore lungo la filiera e la scarsa efficacia delle politiche di coordinamento finora adottate. L'obiettivo della ricerca è quello di identificare gli elementi che possono garantire maggiore equilibrio di potere negoziale tra allevatori suinicoli e macellatori rispetto alla situazione attuale: verificati gli elementi critici che caratterizzano la relazione commerciale tra allevatori e macellatori, si avanzano alcune proposte operative utili al superamento delle fratture tra la componente agricola e quella dei macelli in Emilia Romagna. La struttura della tesi è la seguente: (capitolo 1) si descrive il quadro economico del settore suinicolo a livello internazionale e nazionale. Successivamente (capitolo 2) si passano in rassegna le teorie economiche utili a comprendere le ragioni alla base del malfunzionamento dei rapporti tra gli attori della filiera agroalimentare, mentre nel terzo capitolo è richiamato il quadro normativo comunitario, nazionale e regionale all’interno del quale tali relazioni si configurano. Nel quarto capitolo si elabora un modello interpretativo al fine di spiegare le fratture che oggi contraddistinguono le relazioni in essere tra gli attori della filiera: il “modello delle fratture”. Alla luce di questa concettualizzazione è stata svolta un’indagine diretta svolta presso gli operatori aderenti all’Organizzazione Interprofessionale del Gran Suino Italiano, i cui risultati hanno consentito di valutare l’efficacia del modello interpretativo e di fornire indicazioni migliorative della strategia di governance delle relazioni tra allevatori e macellatori.

Analytics and Methods for Logistic System Design and Operations Management

Analytics is the technology working with the manipulation of data to produce information able to change the world we live every day. Analytics have been largely used within the last decade to cluster people’s behaviour to predict their preferences of items to buy, music to listen, movies to watch and even electoral preference. The most advanced companies succeded in controlling people’s behaviour using analytics. Despite the evidence of the super-power of analytics, they are rarely applied to the big data collected within supply chain systems (i.e. distribution network, storage systems and production plants). This PhD thesis explores the fourth research paradigm (i.e. the generation of knowledge from data) applied to supply chain system design and operations management. An ontology defining the entities and the metrics of supply chain systems is used to design data structures for data collection in supply chain systems. The consistency of this data is provided by mathematical demonstrations inspired by the factory physics theory. The availability, quantity and quality of the data within these data structures define different decision patterns. Ten decision patterns are identified, and validated on-field, to address ten different class of design and control problems in the field of supply chain systems research.

Fattori relazionali e di coordinamento nella filiera agro-alimentare: una valutazione della governance relazionale nel settore lattiero caseario sardo

Characteristics of modern food demand force retailers to acquire more information about product process along the food supply chain to ensure that product are in accordance with consumer preference. Therefore, the product process involves more information flows between buyer and supplier which requires collaborative efforts. These changes translate into several studies on the inter-organizational relationship in agri-food systems. Studies on inter-organizational relationships have been conducted in various academic disciplines, including sociology, psychology, law, economics, marketing, management, and combination of these. Inter-organizational relationships is an interaction between organizations which involved firms horizontally, as well as, vertically. In this study we deal with vertical, buyer-seller relationship which are sometimes referred to chain relationships. We define vertical business relationship in the agriculture-food based sector as “agri-food chain relationships”. The focus is on sustainable inter-organizational relationships in a way that they can be scientifically investigated. We study characteristics which ensure that a relationship is long-lasting and rewarding for all involved parties in the sardinian dairy. We test the theoretical model using structural equation modeling. The results suggest that the most important determinant for the relationships is technology and the price isn’t significant for the relationship governance.

Strumenti di prevenzione e riduzione degli sprechi alimentari. Un piano nazionale per l'Italia

Negli ultimi anni lo spreco alimentare ha assunto un’importanza crescente nel dibattito internazionale, politico ed accademico, nel contesto delle tematiche sulla sostenibilità dei modelli di produzione e consumo, sull’uso efficiente delle risorse e la gestione dei rifiuti. Nei prossimi anni gli Stati Membri dell’Unione Europea saranno chiamati ad adottare specifiche strategie di prevenzione degli sprechi alimentari all’interno di una cornice di riferimento comune. Tale cornice è quella che si va delineando nel corso del progetto Europeo di ricerca “FUSIONS” (7FP) che, nel 2014, ha elaborato un framework di riferimento per la definizione di “food waste” allo scopo di armonizzare le diverse metodologie di quantificazione adottate dai paesi membri. In questo scenario, ai fini della predisposizione di un Piano Nazionale di Prevenzione degli Sprechi Alimentari per l’Italia, il presente lavoro applica per la prima volta il “definitional framework” FUSIONS per l’analisi dei dati e l’identificazione dei principali flussi nei diversi anelli della filiera e svolge un estesa consultazione degli stakeholder (e della letteratura) per identificare le possibili misure di prevenzione e le priorità di azione. I risultati ottenuti evedenziano (tra le altre cose) la necessità di predisporre e promuovere a livello nazionale l’adozione di misure uniformi di quantificazione e reporting; l’importanza del coinvolgimento degli stakeholder nel contesto di una campagna nazionale di prevenzione degli sprechi alimentari; l’esigenza di garantire una adeguata copertura economica per le attività di pianificazione e implementazione delle misure di prevenzione da parte degli enti locali e di un coordinamento a livello nazionale della programmazione regionale; la necessità di una armonizzazione/semplificazione del quadro di riferimento normativo (fiscale, igienico-sanitario, procedurale) che disciplina la donazione delle eccedenze alimentari; l’urgenza di approfondire il fenomeno degli sprechi alimentari attraverso la realizzazione di studi di settore negli stadi a valle della filiera.

Producers' Perceptions and Consumers' Behaviour Toward Certified Beans from Integrated Production (IP) in the Brazilian Central Region

Integrated production (IP) is part of the Brazilian government program to promote sustainable agricultural production. IP ensure minimum food quality standards for domestic market, and export. Furthermore, IP is considered a good option to reduce negative environmental impacts of intensive crops in tropical Savannas, including common beans, as a Brazilian staple food. Although its advantages, and the government’s effort to promote IP, few growers are adopting IP. Maybe, the perception about IP usefulness and/or its ease of use is not too clear. Moreover, the production sector is driven by market signs, and there is few information on the consumer's preferences toward IP certified products in Brazil. In this study, we sought to identify some critical factors that can influence the IP adoption in beans' production. Moreover, we sought to verify the consumers’ perceptions and intention of purchasing IP certified beans (hypothetical product). This report comprises four chapters: (1) an introduction illustrating the context in which the research was based; (2) the results on the study of IP adoption based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM); (3) the choice experiment results applied to identify consumers preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for IP label; (4) the results on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) applied to identify consumers’ perception toward IP certified beans. This research contributes with rich information for the beans’ supply chain, providing several insights to growers, retail and other agents, including policy makers. Beans’ production sector seems to be positively intentioned to adopt IP, but further studies should be conducted to test other adoption indicators using TAM model. Surveyed consumers are willing to pay a premium price for IP labelled beans. They showed a positive attitude toward purchasing IP labelled beans. It is an important information to motivate production sector to offer certified beans to the market.

Advanced decision-support methods for the design, control, and optimization of perishable products life cycle

In the last decades, global food supply chains had to deal with the increasing awareness of the stakeholders and consumers about safety, quality, and sustainability. In order to address these new challenges for food supply chain systems, an integrated approach to design, control, and optimize product life cycle is required. Therefore, it is essential to introduce new models, methods, and decision-support platforms tailored to perishable products. This thesis aims to provide novel practice-ready decision-support models and methods to optimize the logistics of food items with an integrated and interdisciplinary approach. It proposes a comprehensive review of the main peculiarities of perishable products and the environmental stresses accelerating their quality decay. Then, it focuses on top-down strategies to optimize the supply chain system from the strategical to the operational decision level. Based on the criticality of the environmental conditions, the dissertation evaluates the main long-term logistics investment strategies to preserve products quality. Several models and methods are proposed to optimize the logistics decisions to enhance the sustainability of the supply chain system while guaranteeing adequate food preservation. The models and methods proposed in this dissertation promote a climate-driven approach integrating climate conditions and their consequences on the quality decay of products in innovative models supporting the logistics decisions. Given the uncertain nature of the environmental stresses affecting the product life cycle, an original stochastic model and solving method are proposed to support practitioners in controlling and optimizing the supply chain systems when facing uncertain scenarios. The application of the proposed decision-support methods to real case studies proved their effectiveness in increasing the sustainability of the perishable product life cycle. The dissertation also presents an industry application of a global food supply chain system, further demonstrating how the proposed models and tools can be integrated to provide significant savings and sustainability improvements.

Methods and tools to foster territorial approaches for the assessment of food supply chains

The challenges of the current global food systems are often framed around feeding the world's growing population while meeting sustainable development for future generations. Globalization has brought to a fragmentation of food spaces, leading to a flexible and mutable supply chain. This poses a major challenge to food and nutrition security, affecting also rural-urban dynamics in territories. Furthermore, the recent crises have highlighted the vulnerability to shocks and disruptions of the food systems and the eco-system due to the intensive management of natural, human and economic capital. Hence, a sustainable and resilient transition of the food systems is required through a multi-faceted approach that tackles the causes of unsustainability and promotes sustainable practices at all levels of the food system. In this respect, a territorial approach becomes a relevant entry point of analysis for the food system’s multifunctionality and can support the evaluation of sustainability by quantifying impacts associated with quantitative methods and understanding the territorial responsibility of different actors with qualitative ones. Against this background the present research aims to i) investigate the environmental, costing and social indicators suitable for a scoring system able to measure the integrated sustainability performance of food initiatives within the City/Region territorial context; ii) develop a territorial assessment framework to measure sustainability impacts of agricultural systems; and iii) define an integrated methodology to match production and consumption at a territorial level to foster a long-term vision of short food supply chains. From a methodological perspective, the research proposes a mixed quantitative and qualitative research method. The outcomes provide an in-depth view into the environmental and socio-economic impacts of food systems at the territorial level, investigating possible indicators, frameworks, and business strategies to foster their future sustainable development.