IOT-enabled Quality Management Process Innovation and Analytics in China’s Dairy Industry: A Data Flow Modeling Perspective

Since the "melamine" incident was reported in China, China’s dairy industry attracts more and more attention, leading some scholars to conduct research on quality management and safety monitoring issues of China’s dairy industry. The technology of the Internet of Things (IOT) is viewed as one of the best ways to solve the safety problems of China’s dairy industry by supporting the development of dairy traceability systems. This paper firstly analyses the current situation of China’s dairy industry supply chain to get at the root of the problem. We then propose an IOT-enabled quality management framework which is an innovation mode of quality management in China’s dairy industry supply chain. To further highlight the important role of IOT technology, we employ a business process modeling approach based on data flow perspective to describe this innovation management mode. The artifacts we design, especially the matrix of dairy products and process information, can help the practitioners to efficiently monitor the quality information of dairy products.