INNOVATIVE ORGANIZATION SOLUTIONS AND
NEW ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES
FOR FRESH MEAT SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Agostino G. Bruzzone
MISS DIP University of Genoa
Via Opera Pia 15, 16145 Genoa, Italy
agostino@itim.unige.it
st.itim.unige.it
Enrico Bocca, Marina Massei
Liophant Simulation
Via Molinero 1 - 17100 Savona, Italy
{enrico.bocca, marina.massei}@liophant.org
www.liophant.org
Matteo Brandolini
BRB Studio
Office Tower, New Voltri Port - 16100 Genova, Italy
Matteo.brandolini@brbstudio.com
www.brbstudio.com
ABSTRACT
This paper proposes an innovative approach to the supply
chain management of fresh meat. The new evolving
requirements due to many aspects (i.e. market,
regulations, safety) require to design a solution able to
react dynamically and to be redesigned quickly and
effectively, so extensive use of computer simulation is
proposed as support for the logistics re-organization of
this sector. Obviously the approach proposed by the
authors is related to managing the introduction of new
enabling advances and even more for improving the
integration of already available technology
infrastructures; these points represent a key element in
new developments of fresh meat supply chain.
INTRODUCTION
Supply chain management is a very challenging thematic
area: applications often involve complex interactions
among the different components while the size and the
number of the elements to be controlled is usually
overloading the capacity of traditional control systems.
Specific industrial application areas requires often ad hoc
solutions, while the market and legal environment
evolution requires a capacity to dynamically reorganize
the supply chain management system; food sector, from
this point of view, results very critical due to the new
regulations in term of quality and traceability (i.e. UNI
10939 11020, ISO9000:2000, HACCP). Obviously areas
related to fresh food and to specific type of products have
an even large need to be redesigned and re-organized.
So the aim of the presented research is to develop an
integrated solution to improving the fresh meat supply
chain. A key aspect of this research is based on the
development of a simulation model that reproduces all
aspects of that supply chain: from farmers to consumers.
The proposed fresh meat simulation can be used to
quantitatively evaluate the benefits, costs and risks
related to different integrated solutions and to identify the
most robust and reliable protocols and policies. This
research also evaluated the innovative technologies to be
integrated into the solution to improve meat quality and
controls along the entire supply chain. These include
Electronic Tags, Web-Based Data Warehouses, Genetic
Marking, etc.
.....