| Author: | Tsang, Yung Po |
| Title: | Development of a blockchain-enabled IoT system for perishable food e-fulfilment |
| Advisors: | Choy, K. L. (ISE) |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2020 |
| Subject: | Food industry and trade -- Management Business logistics Electronic commerce Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering |
| Pages: | xvii, 247 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | In recent years, perishable food e-commerce (PFEC) has offered significant market potential to provide perishable food items (such as fresh fruit, meat and seafood) through online e-commerce platforms. Due to the presence of shelf life and environmentally-sensitive characteristics, the existing e-fulfilment methods cannot fully address to the needs of handling perishable food, even though e-commerce businesses for general commodities are well-developed and standardised. Compared with typical e-commerce businesses, the product quality in PFEC is not only attributable to the vendors themselves, but also to the logistics service providers (LSPs) who provide storage and transportation services. Further, appropriate cold chain management in e-commerce is lacking, resulting in weak customer confidence for PFEC businesses, and a certain likelihood of food deterioration during the e-fulfilment process. On the other hand, end customers in the PFEC environment can only rely on some basic information (such as product descriptions and customer feedback) before purchase. The transparency and traceability regarding perishable food are also limited, which are essential for assisting customer purchasing decisions and food monitoring. Consequently, there is a need for LSPs to improve their existing e-fulfilment methods in the aspects of environmental monitoring, food traceability and food quality management. This will support business development and foster a positive atmosphere in PFEC. In this research, a blockchain-IoT based multi-temperature e-fulfilment system (BIOMES) is proposed and developed to strengthen the e-fulfilment processes and functionalities when handling food products (which have multiple handling specifications related to environmental conditions) in PFEC. To organise the above concerns in PFEC, three modules in the proposed system are presented: an IoT deployment module (IoTDM), a blockchain data management module (BDMM), and a fuzzy quality management module (FQMM). In essence, the purpose of IoTDM is to structure the deployment of IoT technologies throughout the whole supply chain, by establishing the IoT deployment framework and embedding the concept of traceable resource units (TRUs). Moreover, the deployment scheme of an environmental sensor network is optimised to integrate environmental monitoring and mapping analysis as a whole. Apart from real-time data acquisition, blockchain technology is applied in the BDDM to manage the collected data and formulate food traceability for use in the PFEC environment. The process flow and consensus mechanism of blockchain are customised to align the physical and information flows in the supply chain, and integrate them into the IoTDM cloud. Combining the collected data in IoTDM and BDDM, FQMM provides the three functions on the e-fulfilment process: cold chain passive packaging, multi-temperature delivery route planning, and fuzzy food quality assessment. By doing so, perishable food for completing e-orders can be packed in accordance with the handling specifications, and the maximum time allowed for transportation of packed food can be obtained for enhancing delivery route planning. In addition, the shelf life and quality decay of the food batch can be evaluated in a customised manner for better judgement on the extent of food quality. The feasibility and performance of the proposed system were validated by conducting two case studies in an LSP, in which one of their business scopes is to explore the market of PFEC in Hong Kong. One of the case studies focused on the handling of fresh fruit, and the other examined meat products for PFEC businesses. Through introducing a generic methodology and implementation roadmap in this research, the case studies examined the flexibility and adaptability of the proposed system when handling different categories of perishable food. Through the pilot runs, improvements in customer-, operation-, and information-related aspects of PFEC businesses were observed. The major contribution of this research is in the design and development of a blockchain-enabled IoT system with applied artificial intelligence, which strengthens the areas of environmental monitoring, food traceability and food quality management, which are essences in the eco-system of PFEC businesses. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
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