Finance

Statistical process control

Pathology

Business

Disease

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Mathematics

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Pandemic

Operating system

Statistics

Data collection

Risk analysis (engineering)

Engineering

Environmental economics

Order (exchange)

Artificial intelligence

Economics

Control (management)

Chemistry

Food waste

Cold chain

Computer science

Process (computing)

Food science

Environmental science

Waste management

Medicine

Foods

Temperature fluctuation and abuse in the food cold chain (FCC) is becoming an increasingly crucial factor in the process of food production and for the logistic business, especially in COVID-19 pandemic. The quality of perishable food products depends largely on accurate transport and maintenance temperature. The evidence for temperature-related food waste and loss is extensive. The research problem is thus: how to decrease and control food losses caused by temperature abuse in the FCC and restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary objective is to propose a framework for real-time temperature measurement protocols supported by passive RFID, IoT and Statistical Process Control (SPC) charts. This method allows not only the signaling of temperature abuse alerts but, in addition to hitherto methods, investigation and mitigation of the causes of process instability of individual FCC links in the future. The secondary objective is to delineate the necessary data sources and ways of their collection and utilization in order to decrease food losses and waste via process stabilization of temperature in transport and storage. As contribution to current literature and practice, we offer an in-depth analysis of threats in the FCC in food transport and storage infrastructure and a solution supplemented by SPC charts and tested in controlled experiments that is practicable from economic and technical standpoints.

Economic Impact of Temperature Control during Food Transportation—A COVID-19 Perspective