Industry 4.0 for the Development of More Efficient Decision Support Tools for the Management of Environmental Sustainability in the Agri-Food Supply Chain

Abstract

The agri-food supply chain (ASC) has received a great attention in the last decade due to sustainable issues, not only economical but also environmental and social. This implies that the traditional management methods must be reviewed and changed. Therefore new decision models must arise in which environmental and social aspects will have to be addressed in greater or lesser extent to complement the traditional economical-driven decision models. In this paper a characterization of the main actors and decisions taken throughout a generic ASC as well as the main environmental issues that could affect those decisions are first reviewed. Then, it is aimed to know how each one of these aspects could be enhanced with the incorporation of Industry 4.0 -related technologies to develop more efficient decision support tools for the management of sustainability in ASC.