Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 14
Designing New Supply Chain Networks: Tomato
and Mango Case Studies
Jack G. A. J. van der Vorst, Rob E. Schouten, Pieternel A. Luning
and Olaf van Kooten
Abstract
Consumers expect product availability as well as product quality and
safety in retail outlets. When designing or re-designing fruit and vegetables supply
chain networks one has to take these demands into consideration next to traditional
efficiency and responsiveness requirements. In food science literature, much atten-
tion has been paid to the development of Time-Temperature Indicators to monitor
individually the temperature conditions of food products throughout distribution as
well as quality decay models that are able to predict product quality based upon this
information. This chapter discusses opportunities to improve the design and man-
agement of fruit and vegetables supply chain networks. If product quality in each
step of the supply chain can be predicted in advance, good flows can be controlled
in a pro-active manner and better chain designs can be established resulting in
higher product availability, higher product quality, and less product losses in retail.
This chapter works towards a preliminary diagnostic instrument, which can be used
to assess supply chain networks on QCL (Quality Controlled Logistics). Findings of
two exploratory case studies, one on the tomato chain and one on the mango chain,
are presented to illustrate the value of this concept. Results show the opportunities
and bottlenecks for quality controlled logistics depend on product—(e.g. variability
in quality), process—(e.g. ability to use containers and sort on quality), network-
(e.g. current level of cooperation), and market characteristics (e.g. higher prices for
better products).
This paper is partly based on the following published paper (Van der Vorst et al.
2011
, pp. 94-105).
