Temperature management for the quality assurance of a perishable food supply chain

- Clustering temperature zones for multi-temperature cold storage is investigated.
- The relationship among deterioration rate, shelf life and freshness is presented.
- The methods to access perishable foods' quality in real time are formulated.

Compared to most product supply chains, food supply chains are often more complex and more difficult to manage because the food product is perishable and has a short shelf life. A cold chain or temperature-controlled supply chain provides the essential facilities and methods required to maintain the quality and quantity of foods. Since foods can be time and temperature sensitive in nature, they need to be properly taken care of in terms of harvesting, preparation, packaging, transportation and handling - in other words, throughout the entire chain. Temperature is the most important factor in prolonging or maintaining the shelf life of perishables. Refrigeration is one of most widely used methods to date to slow the bacteria growth that leads to food deterioration. The proper control and management of temperature is crucial in delivering perishables to consumers and ensuring that those perishables are in good condition and safe to eat. This paper addresses the methods used to improve the ability to define an optimal target temperature for multi-commodity refrigerated storage. Simulation results support the fact that the presented methods provide more accurate results compared to the conventional method. In addition, an experiment with a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) was conducted. As a result, the sensor-based methods for real time quality monitoring and assessment that consider product metabolism and Euclidean distance cost depending on temperature changes are found to be superior to the traditional visual assessment method.