An Internet of Things (IoT)-based shelf life management system in perishable food e-commerce businesses

Abstract

In recent years, the rapid development of e-commerce businesses has led to an evolution in the perishable food supply chain, such that perishable food e-commerce businesses have been established for covering business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) transactions. For handling perishable food, accurate shelf life management plays an essential role in estimating product shelf life and in formulating quality degradation model. However, existing methods in shelf life estimation may not be applicable under the e-commerce environment in considering the wide variety of products, fragmented customer orders, and short delivery timeframe. On the other hand, environmental monitoring is another key element for determining ambient environmental conditions, such as temperature and relative humidity, which are used to formulate the quality degradation model. With the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, dramatic enhancements in environmental monitoring with improved power efficiency, security and transmission effectiveness are available. In this paper, an Internet of Things based Shelf Life Management System (ISLMS) is proposed which integrates IoT technologies, fuzzy logic and zero-order quality degradation modelling for handling perishable food. Data acquisition throughout the entire e-commerce business can be done automatically in a cost-effective manner. The collected data is then used to adjust the product shelf life and specific rate of quality degradation, with the rate being applied to the quality degradation model. The environmental changes are taken into consideration during the entire supply chain journey, such that the perishable food is handled by all-round shelf life management. As a consequence, with the adoption of ISLMS, perishable food can be safely managed under the e-commerce environment, while information visibility and customer confidence are further enhanced.