Internet-of-Things paradigm in food supply chains control and management

Starting from the definition of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm, this paper discusses goals and strategies for the design and building of an IoT architecture aiding the planning, management and control of the Food Supply Chain (FSC) operations. A comprehensive architecture of the entities, the physical-objects, the physical and informative flows, the stages and the processes to be sensed, tracked, controlled and interconnected is given to illustrate the interdependencies between the observed supply chain and the exogenous environment. A simulation gaming tool embedding the IoT paradigm for the FSC management is also proposed and illustrated to showcase the potential benefits and opportunities for more direct integration of the physical food ecosystems into virtual computer-aided control environment. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.