The digitisation of food manufacturing to reduce waste – Case study of a ready meal factory

Generation of food waste (FW) continues to be a global challenge and high on the political agenda. One of the main reasons for its generation is the absence of detailed data on the amount, timing and reasons for created waste. This paper discusses the design, the application and investigates the Internet of Things (IoT) based FW monitoring system to capture waste data during manufacturing in real-time and make it available to all the stakeholders in a food supply chain (FSC). A case study of ready-meal factory comprises of design and architecture for tracking FW including both hardware and software, its implementation in the factory and the positive data-driven results achieved. The case study demonstrates the benefits of digital FW tracking system including the FW reduction of 60.7%, better real-time visibility of the FW hotspots, reasons for waste generations, reliable data, operational improvements and employee behavioural transformation. Although the system replaced the paper-based manual system of tracking FW in the factory, it still needed human input to confirm the waste and was prone to human errors. Overall, the implementation of an IoT-based FW tracking system resulted in a reduction of FW and created a positive environmental and financial impact

Post-consumer waste management issues in the footwear industry

Currently, 17 billion pairs of shoes are produced worldwide every year, and this figure continues to rise. This creates an enormous amount of post-consumer (end-of-life) shoe waste that is currently being disposed of in landfill sites around the world. The research reported in this paper is an initial investigation into realization of a holistic approach to application of recovery and recycling in the footwear industry. The paper provides a brief review of the trends in the footwear sector regarding the amount of end-of-life waste produced, together with existing reuse and recycling activities. It also presents an integrated waste management framework by combining a mix of design and material improvements, as well as reuse, recycling, and energy recovery activities, and concludes by examining the challenges in establishing end-of-life product recovery procedures for post-consumer shoes

Real-time data collection to improve energy efficiency in food manufacturing

The demand for energy is on the rise which is caused by a combination of global economic progress and population growth. The food sector is a significant consumer of energy at each stage of the supply chain, i.e. from farm to fork. Hence, improving efficiency and recognizing potentials for energy conservation has become essential in order to address the challenges faced by the food sector. However, most food manufacturing businesses, especially small and medium scale enterprise, have limited awareness of significant potentials offered through the recent technological advancements in real-time energy monitoring. In this context, the concept of ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) has investigated to increase the visibility, transparency and awareness of various resource usage, thanks to the availability of inexpensive and smart sensing devices. This paper presents a case study of a beverage factory where the implementation of IoT-powered sensors and smart meters is based on the embodied product energy (EPE) modelling. This arrangement enabled the collection of real-time data on energy consumption within a food production system to support more informed engineering and operational decisions, leading to an improved energy monitoring and management, as well as substantial cost savings

Evolution in ecodesign and sustainable design methodologies

The majority of the environmental impact of a product is decided during the design phase, and as such there has been a rapid growth in generation of methodologies and tools that aim to improve design and include sustainability considerations in product development. Although these methodologies and tools have introduced measurable benefits, in most cases they have been incremental in nature as opposed to producing radical ‘Factor X’ improvements. This highlights the need for a careful analysis of existing sustainable design methods to identify their shortcomings and to enable a greater understanding of how to unlock the full potential of design improvements. This paper provides a brief overview of the evolution of ecodesign and its extension into sustainable design. It assesses the key influencing factors of current practice and identifies a number of future research challenges, promoting the next stage in its development in which sustainability will become a ubiquitous part of the design process

A methodology for the selection of industrial robots in food handling

As the global population continues to rise and consumer demand for a wider variety of food products increases, food manufacturers are exploring various strategies, methods and tools to change and adapt. Furthermore, restriction in access to low-cost labour and introduction of more stringent legislation are forcing the food industry to update their production processes. Industrial robots, a pillar of Industry 4.0, promises many benefits to the food manufacturing industry, especially in responding to these new challenges. The integration of such automation into food manufacturing has been a slow process in comparison to other manufacturing sectors and has largely been limited to packaging and palletising. This research aims to improve the application of industrial robots within food manufacturing through definition of a methodology for the identification of a flexible automation solution for a specific production requirement. The paper explores the four steps within the Food Industrial Robot Methodology (FIRM), through which users define, classify and identify their foodstuff and automation solution. The application of FIRM is exemplified through an industrial case study to support food manufacturers investigating the potential benefits of utilising industrial robots within their production systems

Utilisation of Internet of Things to improve resource efficiency of food supply chains

The food sector is increasingly facing significant challenges throughout the supply chain to become more resource efficient. In this context, three critical areas of focus are the reduction of food waste, energy, and water consumption. One of the key factors identified as an obstacle to improving resource efficiency is the lack of suitable capabilities to collect, exchange and share real-time data among various stakeholders. Having such capabilities would provide improved awareness and visibility of resource use and help make better decisions that drive overall productivity of the supply chain. The principle concept of the ‘Internet of Things' (IoT) has been used in several applications to improve overall monitoring, planning, and management of supply chain activities. This paper explores the feasibility of adopting such IoT concepts to improve the resource efficiency of food supply chains. An IoTbased framework is proposed to support the incorporation of relevant data into supply chain decision-making models for the reduction of food waste, energy and water consumption

Impact of the use of renewable materials on ecoefficiency of manufacturing processes

The use of renewable materials has attracted interest from a wide range of manufacturing industries looking to reduce their environmental and carbon footprints. As such, the development and use of biopolymers has been largely driven by their perceived environmental benefits over conventional polymers. However, often these environmental claims, when challenged, are lacking in substance. One reason for this is the lack of quality data for all life cycle stages. This applies to the manufacturing stages of packaging, otherwise known as ‘packaging conversion’, where for certain product/production types, a reduction in energy consumption of 25–30% from lower processing temperatures can be offset by an increase in pressure, cycle times and reject rates. The ambiguity of the overall environmental benefit achieved during this stage of the life cycle, when this is the main driver for their use, highlights the need for a clearer understanding of impact that such materials have on the manufacturing processes

Resilience in agri-food supply chains: a critical analysis of the literature and synthesis of a novel framework

Purpose: Resilience in Agri-Food Supply Chains (AFSCs) is an area of significant importance due to growing supply chain volatility. Whilst the majority of research exploring supply chain resilience has originated from a supply chain management perspective, many other disciplines (such as environmental systems science and the social sciences) have also explored the topic. As complex social, economic and environmental constructs, the priority of resilience in AFSCs goes far beyond the company specific focus of supply chain management works and would conceivably benefit from including more diverse academic disciplines. However, this is hindered by inconsistencies in terminology and the conceptual components of resilience across different disciplines. In response, this work utilises a systematic literature review to identify which multidisciplinary aspects of resilience are applicable to AFSCs and to generate a novel AFSC resilience framework. Design/methodology/approach: This paper employs a structured and multidisciplinary review of 137 articles in the resilience literature followed by critical analysis and synthesis of findings to generate new knowledge in the form of a novel AFSC resilience framework. Findings: Findings indicate that the complexity of AFSCs and subsequent exposure to almost constant external interference means that disruptions cannot be seen as a one off event and thus resilience must concern not only the ability to maintain core function but also to adapt to changing conditions. Practical implications: A number of resilience elements can be used to enhance resilience but their selection and implementation must be carefully matched to relevant phases of disruption and assessed on their broader supply chain impacts. In particular, the focus must be on overall impact on the ability of the supply chain as a whole to provide food security rather than to boost individual company performance. Originality/value: The research novelty lies in the utilization of wider understandings of resilience from various research fields to propose a rigorous and food specific resilience framework with end consumer food security as its main focus

Embodied energy in preventable food manufacturing waste in the United Kingdom

The food processing and manufacturing industry is the UK’s largest manufacturing sector and consequently a large consumer of natural resources and source of environmental impacts. Considerable research effort has been made to quantify and characterise food waste and energy consumption from the industry, enabling the sector to set targets for reductions which contribute to national targets and the UN Sustainable Development Goal 12.3, and to identify improvement measures to meet the targets. A gap in this research is a detailed estimation of the energy consumption which could automatically be avoided through preventing food waste in food manufacturing. This paper reports research which estimates the energy embodied in preventable manufacturing food waste in the UK using available data for 2014. Whilst the estimate of 106 GWh per year is a tiny proportion of the industry’s annual energy consumption, it is 1.75 percentage points of the main 20% energy efficiency improvement target and over half the contribution expected from energy management measures to improve energy efficiency. Preventing food waste in the factory could therefore also contribute significantly to energy efficiency and climate change targets with no extra effort

Improving energy efficiency in manufacturing using peer benchmarking to influence machine design innovation

Energy efficiency in manufacturing is important for overall sustainability of society. This paper combines three observations to improve an overlooked part of the energy efficiency support infrastructure in food and drink manufacturing: innovation capability. First, variations in machine and process design produce significant differences in energy efficiency; second, these differences are not widely known or valued because comparable machine energy data are not gathered for the vast majority of products, so machine and process design is under-used as a route to efficiency improvement; third, peer benchmarking has proved to be an effective tool for stimulating change in other contexts, but has not been used at machine level in manufacturing. This paper describes and makes the case for a self-sustaining system in which machines would be validly compared on energy consumption and peer benchmarking would stimulate innovation in machine and process design for food manufacturing. The system, to be tested in a feasibility study, would benefit both food manufacturers and stakeholders. It would avoid dependence on public funding and enable stakeholders to provide value from the data. The paper contains the academic underpinning for the system and sets out an effective means of using it to achieve practical change