Industry 4.0 Challenges Facing the Agri-Supply Chain: A Literature Review †
Center for Supply Chain Improvement, University of Derby, Derby DE22 1GB, UK
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Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
†
Presented at the International Conference on Industry 4.0 for Agri-food Supply Chains: Addressing Socio-economic and Environmental Challenges in Ukraine, Leicester, UK and Online, 24–25 July 2023.
Eng. Proc. 2023, 40(1), 25; https://doi.org/10.3390/engproc2023040025
Published: 2 August 2023
(This article belongs to the Proceedings of International Conference on Industry 4.0 for Agri-food Supply Chains: Addressing Socio-economic and Environmental Challenges in Ukraine)
The world is moving fast, and organizations are facing new risks, uncertainties, and threats within their supply chains. Food security, waste minimization, and sustainability are new strategic requirements agri-organizations must address and focus on. Nevertheless, due to globalization and changes in the market post-COVID-19, supply chains are becoming more complex and agri-organizations must change their business processes and operations to become more competitive, responsive, and agile.
To be more customer-oriented, efficient, and sustainable, agri-organizations have been adopting new innovative technologies such as RFID and the Internet of Things. Recently, the concept of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) has drawn significant attention from specialists, academics, and decision-makers. I4.0 technologies can enhance supply chain performance by bringing new cost-effective, green lean features and solutions that can improve internal and external event traceability, process automation, waste management, data sharing, and KPI monitoring.
However, there are many challenges to the adoption of I4.0 technologies. Therefore, it is very important to study these challenges facing the agri-supply chain.
The main aim of this research is to analyze the literature through a systematic approach to highlight and identify the challenges agri-supply chains are facing while deciding on implementing I4.0 technologies. Using a set of 64 publications, including journal papers, conference papers, reviews, and books chapters, selected from the well-known database Scopus for the last 7 years, a systematic literature review was conducted. The SLR highlights and considers several I4.0 technologies and their applications affecting the agri-supply chain.
The results of this study are based on a thorough analysis of the added-value outcomes of implementing different I4.0 technologies in the agri-food supply chain. Over a dozen challenges are remarked upon in the literature. These challenges are categorized into three main areas in the agri-food supply chain: infrastructural, technical and operational. The most critical challenges detected—within most observations—are technological architecture, security and privacy, and internet- and IoT-based infrastructure.
Author Contributions
Conceptualization, W.K.A.S.; methodology, and formal analysis, W.K.A.S.; data curation and writing—original draft preparation, W.K.A.S.; writing—review and editing, W.K.A.S. and M.A.-T.; supervision, S.P.N. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This research received no external funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement
Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement
Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement
No new data are created.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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MDPI and ACS Style
Al Saad, W.K.; Al-Talib, M.; Nadeem, S.P. Industry 4.0 Challenges Facing the Agri-Supply Chain: A Literature Review. Eng. Proc. 2023, 40, 25. https://doi.org/10.3390/engproc2023040025
AMA Style
Al Saad WK, Al-Talib M, Nadeem SP. Industry 4.0 Challenges Facing the Agri-Supply Chain: A Literature Review. Engineering Proceedings. 2023; 40(1):25. https://doi.org/10.3390/engproc2023040025
Chicago/Turabian StyleAl Saad, Walid Khalid, Moayad Al-Talib, and Simon Peter Nadeem. 2023. "Industry 4.0 Challenges Facing the Agri-Supply Chain: A Literature Review" Engineering Proceedings 40, no. 1: 25. https://doi.org/10.3390/engproc2023040025
