Value-centric design of the internet-of-things solution for food supply chain: Value creation, sensor portfolio and information fusion

The revolution of Internet-of-Things (IoT) is reshaping the modern food supply chains with promising business prospects. To be successful in practice, the IoT solutions should create “income-centric” values beyond the conventional “traceability-centric” values. To accomplish what we promised to users, sensor portfolios and information fusion must correspond to the new requirements introduced by this income-centric value creation. In this paper, we propose a value-centric business-technology joint design framework. Based on it the income-centric added-values including shelf life prediction, sales premium, precision agriculture, and reduction of assurance cost are identified and assessed. Then corresponding sensor portfolios are developed and implemented. Three-tier information fusion architecture is proposed as well as examples about acceleration data processing, self-learning shelf life prediction and real-time supply chain re-planning. The feasibilities of the proposed design framework and solution have been confirmed by the field trials and an implemented prototype system.