Exploring Perishable Food Supply Chain Management

An overview on perishable food logistics
Harland (1996) describes supply chain management as managing business activities and relationships (1) internally within an organization, (2) with immediate suppliers, (3) with first and second-tier suppliers and customers along the supply chain, and (4) with the entire supply chain.
Scott and Westbrook (1991) and New and Payne (1995) describe supply chain management as the chain linking each element of the manufacturing and supply process from raw materials through to the end user, encompassing several organizational boundaries.
Maxwell et al. (2006) argued that the terms, supply chain and the cold chain management could be defined under the "umbrella" of the sustainable production and consumption.

It is hard to divide the process of transportation and storage, since the fresh products should always be kept in an appropriate storage environment, no matter if they are transported or not.
Joshi et al. (2009) argue that compared with non perishable supply chain, the perishable food cold chain costs are higher in transportation, because the perishable food is to be kept in the refrigerator in order to maintain the quality of the food. What is more, no matter in transportation or storage, different products require different temperatures. E.g. milk should be stored at 4 degrees to 10 degrees, while cheese should be kept at 3 to 5 degrees (Manning et al., 2006).
Distribution: Challenges
Moureh and Flick (2004) described that apart from food production, distribution of food is a big business. Transport is an important link in the cold chain as temperature maintenance is critical in this link in order to preserve, safety, and shelf life of perishable food. The takes in food, pharmaceutical, and chemical cold chains are high. The loss of a trailer of food due to improper handling or transport is measured in hundreds of thousands of

The loss of a trailer of temperature sensitive products due to improper transpiration or inventory will cost thousands of dollars. The state discussed above have their own set of complexities thus technology intervention is imperative for ensuring an effective management of cold chains. Innovative and evolving technologies can contribute to ensuring better quality, safety, traceability, transparency and monitoring of perishable food