Optimized decision-making along the supply chain of fruit, vegetables and fish by an open data and service framework, including services for monitoring and evaluating the quality and freshness of groceries
The trade with fresh produce is a top-selling business domain in Germany. In 2016, €19 billion turnover was generated with fresh produce in discounters alone. Logistics and quality assurance processes are well settled. At the same time, the fruit and vegetables sector creates significant amounts of food loss and waste (FLW).
A large proportion of FLW is directly linked to the basic properties of fresh food. Unlike other produce, they have a comparatively short shelf life and also a high variance in shelf life between products. The limited shelf life of food products also constraints the options for optimization by food retailers and logistics. Thus, the players along the food chain need to accept deviations in planning of volumes & quality with respect to production, ordering and sales. This increases the storage costs as well as FLW at short time.
The project “FriDa – Fresh Data” investigates different possibilities to collect food-relevant data along the supply chain. Transport boxes (Returnable Transport Items – RTIs) equipped with sensors and mobile food scanners are used for this purpose. The core element is the FriDa platform, which aggregates and links heterogeneous data along the supply chain to enable further evaluation and application of information, including model-based dynamic prediction of food shelf life. FriDa thus supports an improved flow of information along the food supply chain and enables all participants to make better and data-based decisions.
More information is available on the project website.
