Multi-indicator supply chain management framework for food convergent innovation in the dairy business

Abstract

A comprehensive integrated framework of indicators currently used in lean, agile, sustainable and resilient supply chain paradigms is developed under the umbrella of convergent innovation (CI) and applied to the management of the supply chain of a dairy company, including procurement, processing and distribution of their products to customers. CI is a meta-framework that opens new frontiers for commercial innovation, supply chains and market systems by making the convergence of economic, social and environmental outcomes the target of business and actor decisions throughout society to build supply and demand for commercially viable outcomes. This framework provides a company with a multi-indicator supply chain management tool designed to accommodate the supply chain paradigms of being lean, agile, sustainable and resilient, as well as providing milk-based essential nutrition within a process called convergent innovation. The proposed analytical framework can serve as a decision support tool to systematically evaluate and improve the dairy supply chain from plant production to retailers. In jurisdictions without a quota system for milk production at the farm level, the system constructed in this paper could be expanded to handle farm production and shipment to dairy processing plants.