Title : Food Supply chain management using LTE network cum wireless sensor network
Company : NEC Corporation
Purpose : Approval
Doc number : IOT5-XXXXXXX
Meeting : GISFI#5, Hyderabad, India, 20 – 22 June, 2011
1. Introduction
Background
In day to day human life people consume food items across different retail markets supplied by supply chain management systems. Food supply chain management system (FSCM) contributes in supplying food to the market – from producer to customer. Hence FSCM system determines the food quality, food price and constant availability of food in the market.
FSCM consist of all activities involved in movement of food from producers to consumers. These activates include the purchase, storage, transportation, distribution and processing of food. In India there is dual food markets (1) Indian Government controlled public market and (2) open, private market. About half of the marketed surplus food grain is marketed through government controlled market and other half is through private one. The government agencies procure wheat and rice from farmers as stipulated by the government. These food are sold to consumers at subsidized prices through the Public Distribution System (PDS).
Issues
In this section we present the issues related to FSCM in India today. The first few bullets give the issues in India and the following bullets describe some additional problems.
FSCM issues in India:
· In India there are restrictions on the movement of food between states by private traders still movement of food between states by private traders is prevalent.
· The poor have not been able to take advantage of Public distribution system (PDS) because according to reports one third of rice and wheat supplied through PDS leaks to the open private market before reaching customers.
· Food storage is a normal trading activity; the motives of the private and public storage differ. Private traders store in order to make profit from off season price raises, where the case is vice versa with public storage.
· The factors which contribute to the rise in price of food commodities are distribution cost which includes storage charges, handling expenses, and storage and transit shortages. Transit shortages occur due to missing wagons, natural calamities and theft. Storage shortages occur due to the deterioration of stocks and theft.
· Most of the food grains, fruits, some of the other food items are available only in specific seasons. It depends on the harvesting period and quantity of harvest. The seasonal food is stocked by both public and private sectors to meet demand during non-seasonal period. Still it is quite often seen that the demand and supply do not meet the market needs. This leads to increase in food price as well as food demand.
· In storage house it is difficult to find out whether food has expired or about to expire .There is lack of tracking and notification mechanisms.
· The irrigation facility is must for the farm, it is difficult to check and monitor the water level and other conditions of the crop. In the history and survey reports says that most of the crops do not yield good result because of lack of well managed irrigation system.
· When the season changes and climate changes during the new field of plantation, fertilization of soil is a must for the field. Most of the places in India fertilization for the field is done manually. This method is not efficient, since this requires huge labor and involves inefficient method of field assessment that results in poor crop yield by the field.
· Crops are affected by pests such as weeds, fungus and bacteria and microorganism growth. There is no proper way of controlling and checking such impacts on the crop that in turn impacts the crop yield from the field.
· Sometimes chemicals are sprayed on food so as to give it a fresh look and make it appealing to the customer. Such chemicals can have bad impact on the health of people / society.
Following bullets describe some of the additional problems that are drivers for a better and efficient FSCM in India.
· Population is growing at a rapid pace 2.2% per annum. Due to the higher population growth the need for food is growing in the country as wells as the need for efficient storage areas.
· Number of people at the poverty line or below is huge (~25% below poverty line).Better controlled PDS and private markets are necessary to address price rise.
· Large percentage of people are dependent on agriculture or related business (60% as per Finance Asia, Feb. 2011). To provide price support to producers, effective tracking system needs to be in place to control inter-state transit of foods items by private traders.
· Although large population is dependent on agriculture the contribution from agriculture to the Indian GDP is very low (17% as per Finance Asia, Feb. 2011).
· Due to in-efficient supply chain management issues most of food produced in India is wasted (~20%, ~USD 10 Billion).
· Indian food retail market is huge and is planned to be opened for foreign investment especially for supply chain (~USD 450 Billion now and ~USD 1.5 Trillion in2025).
Objectives
Objectives of proper FSCM is given below:
a. To provide price support to producers.
b. To distribute food grains through the public distribution system (PDS) at reasonable and uniform prices especially to the weaker sections of the society.
c. To have better price controls on the food items sold in private markets.
d. To ensure food security through better management of food stocks for PDS and disasters like drought.
e. To facilitate better cultivation by addressing problems in cultivation, to ensure supply vs. demand is met.
2. Usage scenarios with solutions
All the above issues can be addressed by having a food supply chain management which is intelligent. The proposed solution could be implemented using existing wireless technologies like 3G, WLAN, LTE and WiMAX networks. In the device side 802.15.4, Bluetooth and RFID based wireless sensors could be deployed however in this document we use LTE as the example wireless network technology. We have introduced the Active Transport Tracking Device (ATTD) using the wireless sensor network as part of this solution. The following bullets address all the issues discussed in section 1.
· Every ATTD device shall be labeled (programmed) with food details, any other details required and attached to food basket (or other container food) that is loaded in vehicle for transfer. If there is theft or displaced by unauthorized person, ATTD device would raise alarms and send alert message to both the buyer and seller.
· The FSCM system could check weight periodically and there by could control food leak. The food leak would raise alarm and send notification to the controller system.
· The existing FCSM in India it is very difficult to find out the food stock and market demands due to lack of tracking mechanism. The proposed FSCM system would resolve this issue by collecting the information about food stock and estimate accurately the demand and supply for a given period
· The FSCM system should detect and raise the alarm when the food item expires.
· If any of the person like vendor/distributor/ production unit would be interested to know about the current place of food vehicle, food condition and other details it should be possible to query the FSCM system. The ATTD device would also detect and raise alarm information if there are any chemical residuals are added or if there is change in the quality of the food while in transit. In addition alarm would be raised and notified if there is any change in goods estimated travel time. The goods travel delay would affect the food quality
· FSCM system with irrigation feature support sensor network would help to detect the water level in crops field and would initiate water supply to the crops field if the water level goes below the threshold level
· FSCM system with fertilization feature support sensor network would help supply fertilizers to fields when and as necessary.
· FSCM system with pesticides feature support sensor network would also help for pesticides control of the crops when it detects the weeds, fungus, bacteria, and microorganism growth
Figure 1 shows the flow diagram with potential stages of FSCM from loading of food into the truck up to its delivery in distribution center. In this approach we will have possibility of multiple scenarios based on the mode of transportation. Here we describe one example scenario.
Figure 1: Example scenario: Steps of transportation process (Farm to distribution center via ship)
The following steps describe how the information is measured at the each level and reported over the LTE network for scenario / steps given in Figure 1. The scenario under discussion is best suited for vegetables, fruits and any other food items loaded from the farm. We also consider unloading into the delivery center via truck and ship. In the following scenario the measurement information shall be send periodically with the presence of LTE network
1. The food items collected from the farm shall be loaded into the baskets for sending to the distribution center. Then ATTD device shall be programmed and attached to every basket before loading in the truck. ATTD device shall be programmed on what to measure, how to be measure etc.
Once the food basket is loaded into the truck, ATTD device shall detect details of the nearest basket together with food quality, temperature, truck details, route details and other details it is programmed for. For every unit of measurement, periodically and on demand request basis the measurement information shall be send to back office over the LTE network.
2. While the truck is on move, the sensor system shall measure certain information like truck speed, food quality, and food conditions and other parameters. Once the truck reaches the harbor access where food baskets shall be unloaded and loaded into the ship and mean time ATTD device shall also detect the absence of truck.
3. The moment baskets are loaded into the ship, the system shall detect the ship ID and the food baskets position together with other required information.
4. When ship reaches the destination harbor, the sensor network shall detect and notify to the vendor and distributor / production unit.
5. The system shall help to detect the theft and maintain food quality as well enable the cash transaction automatically. While the food is in transit or in any other stage if there could be any change in the food quality by adding the chemical substances shall be detected and notified.
3. Requirements
This section we describe requirements for FSCM architecture. We assume that coverage of a mobile / wireless network like LTE will be available all or most of the time.
1. FSCM system shall have the functionality to detect the food theft and raise the alarm, to notify to the controller while the Food items are in transit or in storage.
2. FSCM system shall have the functionality to detect the food item leakage and raise the alarm so to notify to the controller while the food is on transit or in the storage
3. FSCM system shall have the functionality to check the food stock in storage and production unit, farm etc. against demand in the market. Current market demand shall be maintained in distributed database.
4. FSCM system shall have the functionality to detect and sense the food quality changes or expiry of the food, where food item are in transit/storage and raise alarm, notification to the controller automatically.
5. FSCM system shall have the functionality to detect and collect the route information and vehicle information, current place of the vehicle and send it to the controller automatically.
6. FSCM system shall have the functionality to detect water level in crops field and if the water goes behind the threshold it shall raise the alarm.
7. FSCM system shall have the functionality to detect fertilization in crops field and if the fertilization deficiency has found in the crops field it would initiate the fertilization supply automatically.
8. FSCM system shall the functionality to detect weeds, fungus and bacteria, microorganism growth, in crops field and it would initiate the pesticides supply automatically.
In the following non-functional requirements of FSCM system are given:
1. All ATTD devices in FSCM system shall be programmed like what to be measure, how to measure, where and when to measure.
2. Time synchronization will be required across the all machines with in the architecture.
3. ATTD devices shall communicate and exchange measurement information within the transport (e.g., a truck) but not with other devices in other transports (e.g., between trucks).
4. If LTE network is not available for communication, then the ATTD or LTE UE securely shall store and maintain all the measured information collected from sensor network until LTE network coverage is restored.
5. Measurement information from the sensor network shall be send to the corresponding private network of vendor, distributor and production unit,