Selecting food process designs from a supply chain perspective

- Food supply chain characteristics affect the performance of food process designs.
- Process evaluation and selection methods need to account for these characteristics.
- Adapting existing methods provides interesting insights when comparing designs.
- Selection of the best process design is case dependent.
- The entire product portfolio is key to select the best process designs.

The food industry can convert agro-materials into products using many alternative process designs. To remain competitive, companies have to select the design leading to the best supply chain performance. These designs differ in the technologies used and the product portfolio produced. Additionally, characteristics, such as seasonal production and quality decay of food products, lead to specific requirements regarding processing, transportation and storage. The importance of these characteristics of the food industry on process design selection is investigated using sugar beet processing as an illustrative case. The characteristics are included in a multi-period, multi-product location-allocation model. The model shows that a supply chain perspective leads to changes in process design selection. The design with the best portfolio value and processing costs does not lead to the best supply chain performance. This shows the importance of a chain perspective to avoid sub-optimization in food process design selection.