Performance Measurement and Improvement in Short Food Supply Chains: A Case Study from Lyon, France

Abstract

Consumers who look for high-quality food products with well-known origins turn to shorter and more transparent food supply chains. Food supply chains that aim at a minimized number of intermediaries are called Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs). Despite the consumer demand, SFSCs face logistics challenges that affect their performance, limit their potential benefits, and prevent them from adjusting their capacity in the face of volatile demand. In the literature, the logistics drawbacks of SFSCs are widely acknowledged; however, the available research mostly consists of descriptive studies rather than prescriptive ones that adopt modeling approaches and offer solutions to such drawbacks. This paper presents an ongoing prescriptive study that is based on a real SFSC from Lyon, France. In the study that seeks performance improvement strategies for the handled SFSC, an agent-based model is being developed on the simulation platform AnyLogic to represent the actual state of the initiative. Additionally, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are being proposed for performance measurement, by considering the weaknesses of SFSCs in a general sense and the particularities of the case study. The next steps of the study will include the modeling of to-be scenarios that will be determined based on the literature and real-life information, as well as a comparison between the as-is model and the to-be models using the proposed KPIs, to offer decision support at strategic and tactical levels.