A fuzzy decision tool to evaluate the sustainable performance of suppliers in an agrifood value chain

Sustainable supply chain management has received much attention from both academia and industry due to various issues such as economic stability, environment conservation, and social ethics. To improve the sustainable performance of a value chain, its members need to carefully select their suppliers in relation to their own strategy. Thus, an effective tool for sustainable supplier selection and evaluation is essential, which considers the triple bottom line (TBL) of economic, environmental and social aspects by means of criteria adapted to the situation analysed. This paper develops a fuzzy decision tool to evaluate the sustainable performance of suppliers according to TBL. Sustainability criteria are identified to take into account the real hotspots in a food value chain. The proposed model integrates triangular fuzzy numbers (TFN), AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) and TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) in a novel way to consider quantitative and qualitative criteria as well as objective and subjective data. This is missing in most existing research when building their fuzzy models for supplier selection, but critical in dealing with the heterogeneous data available for TBL assessment. The application in a sustainable agrifood value chain illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed tool

A process-based guide for international entrepreneurs while investing in the agrifood sector of an emerging economy: a multi-layer decision-making approach

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Purpose – Due to the political, economic and infrastructure barriers and risks that international entrepreneurs (IEs) face when researching an emerging economy’s agrifood sector, this research aims to identify the major barriers, analyse their relationships, quantify their importance, classify and rank them. Thus, the IEs will gain a better understanding and vision of their decision-making processes in this era. Design/methodology/approach – To do this, the authors first created a list of barriers to entry for IEs into Iran’s rising economy’s agrifood industry. Following that, a multi-layer decision-making approach was developed and implemented to accomplish the research objectives. The first stage utilized a hybrid of interpretive structural modelling (ISM) and cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) to depict the level-based conceptual model and classification of the IEs’ obstacles to entry into the agrifood sector. Following that, a hybrid decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), and analytic network process (ANP) called DANP was utilized to present a causal relationship between the barriers, identify their causes and effects, and also quantify the relevance of each barrier. Findings – After employing the multi-layer decision-making approach, the results demonstrated that fundamental limitations, including infrastructure and technology limitations, are the most critical barriers alongside policy factors encompassing governmental support and access to global or regional economy/ market. According to the results, innovation and economic sustainability of the agrifood supply chain also matter. All of these critical barriers are intertwined and should be planned and solved simultaneously. Furthermore, based on DANP results, the sustainability pillars (economy, environment, society), besides the low efficiency of the agrifood sector in Iran, should be investigated further for future policy makings. Originality/value – A hybrid multi-layer decision-making approach has been used for analysing the barriers of investment in the agrifood sector of the emerging economy of Iran for the international entrepreneurs. Moreover, the authors provide implications and insights for IEs and officials for decision-making in the future

Method and approach Mapping for Agri-food Supply Chain Risk Management: A literature review

One of the agri-food characteristics is perishable product which made it has a higher chance damage risk from the farmer to the consumer. While issues around food security and associated risks are extremely important. Some methods or approaches have been used to identify and assess risks that occur in agri-food supply chain. The purpose of this paper was to identify the development of methods or approaches used to identify and assess the risks that occured in the agri-food supply chain. The articles search was undertaken through articles search on selected relevant journals of supply chain risk management for agri-food published from 2004 until 2014. A total of 77 randomly selected journal articles had been analyzed. These mapping were arranged in systematic stages, started from searches related supply chain risk management for agrifood. Furthermore, the articles identified and classified the methods or approaches for each stage of supply chain risk management, and were divided into three main stages: risk identification, risk assessment and risk mitigation. The last, the articles of risk identification are categorized into three groups : qualitative, semi-quantitative and qualitative.The mapping results showed that risk assessment supply chain for agri-food was much related to microbiology risk assessment. It related to the characteristics of agri-food products. Standard models used for risk assessment in supply chain for agri-food were based on integration of statistical analysis and simulation. The other techniques used included intelligent technique, optimization models and multi-criteria decision analysis. The literature on supply chain risk management for agri-food is so vast, complex and difficult to understand that a mapping of method and approach is needed and much value for the research community. Keywords :supply chain risk, risk identification, risk assessment, risk mitigation, agri-foo

Transforming Developing Countries Agrifood Value Chains

The global agrifood trade is highly reliant on developing countries, which affects value chain transformation and which often results in an imbalance of governance and value addition. In order to address this imbalance and increase the overall value creation, this paper develops and empirically tests a framework for agrifood value chain transformation in developing countries. The research employs a qualitative methodology to explore the proposed framework, which is based on a value chain maturity assessment of current practice and identification of a transformation route. Three primary value chain maturity levels in developing countries are established: traditional, managed, and best practice. Each level is determined using key indicators relating to governance (vertical-horizontal coordination, and information flow) and value addition (value orientation, safety, and quality). The application of this framework to Indonesia’s cashew nuts value chain reveals a mix of traditional and managed practices. The short-medium term transformation focuses on enabling farmers, as the decoupled actors, to advance from a traditional to a more managed chain. Further, the major wholesaler and exporter are identified as highly influential in driving the transformation process. The long-term transformation focuses on developing best practices regarding branded value addition and collaborative governance. This framework offers a novel value chain transformation approach based on a maturity assessment technique leading to the identification of transformation routes. This method takes a holistic transformation approach via the evaluation all the value chain actors’ governance and value-addition capabilities. Follow-up research is required to identify the enablers and barriers of globalised value chain transformation, especially with respect to sustainability

The influence of sustainability on the complexity of food supply chains

The sustainability of food supply chains (FSCs) depends on the concurrent successful performance in the environmental, economic, and social dimensions. However, FSCs are complex socio-technical systems subjected to inevitable trade-offs and the impossibility of full control. Based on a systematic literature review, this study investigates how sustainability affects the complexity of FSCs. A total of 75 articles were analyzed. A thematic analysis revealed 16 factors associated with the three dimensions of sustainability. These factors were then associated with five complexity attributes: a large number of elements, dynamically interacting elements, diversity of elements, unexpected variability, and resilience. All factors amplify the complexity of FSCs, mostly in terms of increasing the number and diversity of elements. Findings made it possible to develop a complexity-based account of the sustainability of FSCs, raising questions and insights that might inform the design and operation of more sustainable FSCs, which effectively cope with their inherent complexity

A GENETIC ALGORITHM APPROACH FOR DYNAMIC SUPPLIER SELECTION

Supplier selection has a great impact on supply chain management. This decision considers many factors such as price, order quantity, quality, and delivery performance. We address a dynamic supplier selection problem (DSSP) which a buyer should procure multiple product from multiple supplier in multiple periods. Furthermore, transportation cost has significant impact in the procurement decision. However, only a few researchers consider transportation cost in their model. This paper proposes a dynamic supplier selection problem considering truckload shipping. A mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP) model is developed to solve dynamic supplier selection problem. The purpose of model is to assign the best supplier that will be allocated products and to determine the right time to order that can minimize total procurement cost. In addition, constraints such as suppliers’ capacity, truck capacity, inventory balance, service level, and buyer storage are taken into consideration in the model. Due to the complexity of the problem, the formulated problem is NP-hard in nature so a genetic algorithm (GA) is presented to solve dynamic supplier selection problem. Finally numerical example has been solved by the proposed GA and the classical method using Lingo 16. The results illustrate an understandable slight errors in total cost when GA is compared to commonly used classical method

Shifting the Paradigm: Agricultural Marketing in a Product Conscious Age

Australian agriculture needs a new business model. The traditional broad acre food and fibre industries (wool, meat, grains)are coming under increasing competitive pressure. Effective resource management is one side of the competitive response. Improving returns through innovative marketing is another. Value chain development and management is an increasing focus by innovative food and fibre businesses. These industries have been slow to adopt alternatives to the traditional auction and trading arrangements. What then are the critical considerations underpinning the development of a value chain approach? And how can value chain development and performance be monitored and improved

Conceptual framework for designing agri-food supply chains under uncertainty by mathematical programming models

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in [include the complete citation information for the final version of the article as published in the International Journal of Production Research (2018) © Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2018.1447706[EN] Agri-food sector performance strongly impacts global economy, which means that developing optimisation models to support the decision-making process in agri-food supply chains (AFSC) is necessary. These models should contemplate AFSC¿s inherent characteristics and sources of uncertainty to provide applicable and accurate solutions. To the best of our knowledge, there are no conceptual frameworks available to design AFSC through mathematical programming modelling while considering their inherent characteristics and sources of uncertainty, nor any there literature reviews that address such characteristics and uncertainty sources in existing AFSC design models. This paper aims to fill these gaps in the literature by proposing such a conceptual framework and state of the art. The framework can be used as a guide tool for both developing and analysing models based on mathematical programming to design AFSC. The implementation of the framework into the state of the art validates its. Finally, some literature gaps and future research lines were identified.This first author was partially supported by the Programme of Formation of University Professors of the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport [grant number FPU15/03595]; the partial support of Project 'Development of an integrated maturity model for agility, resilience and gender perspective in supply chains (MoMARGE). Application to the agricultural sector.' Ref. GV/2017/025, funded by the Generalitat Valenciana. The other authors acknowledge the partial support of Project 691249, RUC-APS: Enhancing and implementing Knowledge based ICT solutions within high Risk and Uncertain Conditions for Agriculture Production Systems, funded by the EU under its funding scheme H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015.Esteso, A.; Alemany Díaz, MDM.; Ortiz Bas, Á. (2018). Conceptual framework for designing agri-food supply chains under uncertainty by mathematical programming models. International Journal of Production Research. 56(13):4418-4446. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2018.1447706S44184446561

Development of a framework to evaluate level lean and sustainability of a supplier

The concept of lean has been studied and proven to be an effective philosophy to eliminate waste, resulting in operational gains and improvements across the whole supply chain. However, nowadays that is not enough for an organization to be competitive only in terms of economic aspects, but also to be competitive from environmental and social points of view. This impacts the whole supply chain, especially on the supplier selection and therefore, this dissertation aims to understand the link between lean and sustainability and what are the criteria used to determine a lean sustainable supplier. Hence, a systematic literature review (SLR) was carried out, along with a bibliometric analysis of lean and sustainability relationship using the platform Web of Science from 2010 to 2021. Furthermore, a map was drawn to observe an underlying intellectual structure based on the collected data using NVIVO software. An online survey was used as the research methodology and a conceptual framework to assess the level of lean and sustainability of a supplier was proposed. Through factor analysis, the results obtained suggest that there is a strong correlation among lean and sustainability given a good global adjustment fit among latent variables. Moreover, the local adjustment displayed a mediocre fit since three out of six dimensions showed good reliability and validity among latent and manifest variables. In the end, the factor loading between lean and sustainability in 0,964 in which validates the conceptual framework.O conceito lean tem sido estudado e comprovado como uma filosofia eficaz para a eliminação de desperdícios, resultando em ganhos operacionais e melhorias em toda a cadeia de abastecimento. No entanto, atualmente isso não é suficiente para uma organização ser competitiva apenas nos âmbitos econômicos, mas também ser competitiva no ponto de vista ambiental e social. Isso tem impacto em toda a cadeia de abastecimento, principalmente na seleção de fornecedores e assim, esta dissertação visa entender a ligação entre lean e sustentabilidade e quais são os critérios utilizados para determinar um fornecedor lean e sustentável. Para isso, foi realizada uma revisão sistemática da literatura (SLR), juntamente com uma análise bibliométrica da relação entre lean e sustentabilidade, usando a plataforma Web of Science (WoS) de 2010 a 2021. Além disso, foi também elaborado um mapa para observar a estrutura intelectual subjacente com base nos dados coletados usando o software NVIVO designados como “cluster”. Uma pesquisa online foi utilizada como metodologia de pesquisa e foi proposta uma estrutura conceitual para avaliar o nível de lean e sustentabilidade de um fornecedor. Através da análise fatorial, os resultados obtidos sugerem que existe uma forte correlação entre lean e sustentabilidade dado um bom ajuste global de ajuste entre as variáveis latentes. Além disso, o ajuste local apresentou um ajuste medíocre, pois três das seis dimensões apresentaram boa confiabilidade e validade entre as variáveis latentes e manifestas. Por fim, o fator entre lean e sustentabilidade é de 0.964 o que valida a fremework conceptual