Managing the food supply chain in the age of digitalisation: a conceptual approach in the fisheries sector

Abstract

In the food supply chain, digitalisation is a process that can have a major impact at the point of origin/point of capture. In order to study the process of digitalisation, this work proposes a two-layer conceptual approach applicable to the fisheries sector. The conceptual approach has a sensor layer where wireless sensor network (WSN) theory is used to model the associated energy consumption of a network of sensors. In the analytics layer, data collected from sensor readings associated to ocean monitoring are analysed using time series. A case study in the fisheries sector is used to illustrate the proposed approach where WSN theory is evaluated based on its applicability to oceanic observation buoys equipped with sensors. Then, a large dataset generated from ocean buoys readings is analysed using time series/scatter diagrams to identify trends and patterns involving snow crab catch conditions. The proposed approach can be seen as a tool that can assist in the management of the supply chain and the adoption of more efficient practices in the fisheries sector which is experiencing a process of digitalisation characterised by the adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to monitor product history and provenance tracking among others.

Keywords:

• Supply chain digitalisation
• Internet of Things (IoT)
• Food and perishable goods supply chain
• fisheries sector
• wireless sensor network
• time-series analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adrian E. Coronado Mondragon

Adrian E. Coronado Mondragon received the PhD degree from the Department of Systems Engineering, Brunel University, West London, UK. He is Senior Lecturer in Technology and Operations Management at the School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway University of London. His research interests cover technology adoption in supply chains, modularity, manufacturing supply chains and Internet of Things (IoT) and distributed ledger technology in logistics.

Christian E. Coronado Mondragon

Christian E. Coronado Mondragon received his PhD in Industrial Engineering from the Department of Industrial Engineering at the Montreal Polytechnic School in Montreal, Canada. He currently serves as Academic Director of the Master's Program in Technology Management at the Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland. His areas of specialisation include innovation, creativity, statistical quality control, intellectual property quality systems and digitalisation.

Etienne S. Coronado

Etienne S. Coronado received his PhD from the Department of Electrical and Computational Engineering from the University of Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. He has extensive experience as an information security architect within the telecommunications sector. His areas of expertise include security in cellular, network, computational cloud and applications and Internet of Things (IoT).