Quality and Operations Management in Food Supply Chains

Conclusions

In this paper, we have reviewed the operations management research on food quality and safety. Unlike other disciplines that study food quality, the Operations Management (OM) field has focused on using optimization models to capture the effects of important operational variables (e.g., inventory, routing, and pricing) on both economic and social benefits. In some studies, food quality is modeled as a constraint to the storage or distribution time, while in others, it is modeled as a decreasing parameter which depends on the required preservation conditions or time. We classify the literature into four categories, ranging from inventory decision for perishable food products, distribution problems for perishable food products, and dynamic pricing decisions for perishable food products to operations management for food traceability and safety. Furthermore, we survey the research contributions of the literature, discuss the up-to-date research development, and identify challenges for further research within each category. The importance of product quality is reflected in the current research, in terms of both research contributions and the variety of the methodologies used. The future research agenda is also proposed to enrich the understanding of various kinds of operations management decisions and food quality.