Cor Verdouw

Wageningen University & Research | WUR · Wageningen Economic Research

Digital Twins are digital equivalents of real-life objects. They allow producers to act immediately in case of (expected) deviations and to simulate effects of interventions based on real-life data. Digital Twin and eXtended Reality technologies (including Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality and Virtual Reality technologies), when coupled, are promisi...

This paper presents a conceptual framework that reflects the current state of thinking on tokenizing circularity in agri-food systems. The framework is built upon classifications of tokens and the key principles of circular economy and shows how tokenization can support circularity in agri-food systems through the flows of information and flows of...

CONTEXT Digital technologies nowadays play a major role in innovation within the agri-food domain. The evolution of IT systems has currently arrived at a level that involves complex systems integration and business ecosystems in which many stakeholders in different roles are involved. A new paradigm for digital innovation is needed that copes with...

Digital Twins can be considered as a new phase in smart and data-driven greenhouse horticulture. A Digital Twin is a digital equivalent to a real-life object of which it mirrors its behaviour and states over its lifetime in a virtual space. Research indicates that they can substantially enhance productivity and sustainability, and are able to deal...

Ghana produces 20% of global cocoa output and is the second-largest producer and exporter of cocoa beans in the world. The Ghana cocoa industry is, however, challenged by a lack of adequate decision support systems across the supply chain. Particularly, cocoa farmers have limited access to information, which impedes planning, pricing, benchmarking,...

With the many promises it holds in addressing problems concerning information exchange and digital transactions in multi-actor processes, blockchain technology (BCT) has gained considerable traction in the agrifood sector. Governments, international organisations, private companies, consortia of public and private actors are launching various block...

Digital Twins are very promising to bring smart farming to new levels of farming productivity and sustainability. A Digital Twin is a digital equivalent of a real-life object of which it mirrors its behaviour and states over its lifetime in a virtual space. Using Digital Twins as a central means for farm management enables the decoupling of physica...

Supply chains are increasingly being virtualized in response to globalization and emerging market challenges. Virtualization requires technical innovation using IoT technologies such as smart sensors, and it allows to transmit quality information across the chain. Associated organizational innovation is complex, especially in SME-dominated supply c...

A digital twin is a digital replica of a physical entity to which it is remotely connected. A digital twin can provide a rich representation of the corresponding physical entity and enables sophisticated control for various purposes. Although the concept of the digital twin is largely known, designing digital twins based systems has not yet been fu...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to be a real game changer in food and farming. However, an important challenge for large-scale uptake of IoT is to deal with the huge heterogeneity of this domain. This paper develops and applies an architecture framework for modelling IoT-based systems in the agriculture and food domain. The framework compr...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to be a real game changer that will drastically improve productivity and sustainability in food and farming. However, current IoT applications in this domain are still fragmentary and mainly used by a small group of early adopters. The Internet of Food and Farm 2020 Large-Scale Pilot (IoF2020) addresses the...

Big Data is becoming a new asset in the agri-food sector including enterprise data from operational systems, sensor data, farm equipment data, etc. Recently, Big Data applications are being implemented to improve farm and chain performance in agri-food networks. Still, many companies are refraining from sharing data because of fear of governance is...

The Internet of Things (IoT) provides a vision of a world in which the Internet extends into the real world embracing everyday objects. In the IoT, physical objects are accompanied by Digital Twins: virtual, digital equivalents to physical objects. The interaction between real/physical and digital/virtual objects (digital twins) is an essential con...

Smart Farming is a development that emphasizes the use of information and communication technology in the cyber-physical farm management cycle. New technologies such as the Internet of Things and Cloud Computing are expected to leverage this development and introduce more robots and artificial intelligence in farming. This is encompassed by the phe...

Digital exchange of information is becoming increasingly standard practice in horticulture. This development is catalysed by a trend of upscaling that is ongoing in all horticultural subsectors. Previous research has shown that the advantages of e-orders, in terms of lower lead times and lower distribution costs, increase considerably when more tha...

Big Data is becoming a new asset in the agri-food sector including enterprise data from operational systems, sensor data, farm equipment data, etc. Recently, Big Data applications are being implemented to improve farm and chain performance in agri-food networks. Still, many companies are refraining from sharing data because of fear of governance is...

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to be a real game changer that will drastically improve productivity and sustainability in food and farming. However, current IoT applications in this domain are still fragmentary and mainly used by a small group of early adopters. The Internet of Food and Farm 2020 Large-Scale Pilot (IoF2020) addresses the...

Traceability is considered to be a vital issue for all stakeholders in food supply chains. The most important driver is the increasing societal need to guarantee food quality and provenance. Because consumers cannot know in detail what processing steps are executed in the production of food and what ingredients or resources are used in these steps,...

This literature review on Internet of Things (IoT) in agriculture and food, provides an overview of existing applications, enabling technologies and main challenges ahead. The results of the review show that this subject received attention by the scientific community from 2010 on and the number of papers has increased since then. The literature on...

New technologies become available to support agro and food production. New concepts like Smart Farming are driving innovations and the way we work together. Also research has to adapt and be aware what these new technologies, like Big Data and Internet of Things, and new concepts can bring them. There is an increasing need for cooperation according...

Smart farming is a management style that includes smart monitoring, planning and control of agricultural processes. This management style requires the use of a wide variety of software and hardware systems from multiple vendors. Adoption of smart farming is hampered because of a poor interoperability and data exchange between ICT components hinderi...

Today most flowers physically pass through the Dutch auction houses on their fixed routes from growers located all over the world to European customers. Physical presence is necessary to allow for inspection, quality control and break-bulk activities. Several developments, such as increased internationalization and virtualization, stimulate the sec...

Internet technologies allow supply chains to use virtualizations dynamically in operational management processes. This will improve support for food companies in dealing with perishable products, unpredictable supply variations and stringent food safety and sustainability requirements. Virtualization enables supply chain actors to monitor, control,...

Modern information-based technologies, such as self-driving tractors, GPS (global positioning systems), robot milking machines, automated egg production, drones, satellite data and social media, will change farm practices and agricultural structures and contribute to the prosperity and resilience of farming systems. Food chains will not only become...

Production processes in horticulture are increasingly industrialized. Greenhouses have developed towards high-tech production plants that are highly automated by advanced systems for climate control, irrigation, crop monitoring, harvesting, internal transportation, sorting and packaging. At the same time, horticultural production nowadays is a comp...

Logistics in the food and agribusiness industry must address perishable products, unpredictable supply variations and stringent food safety and sustainability requirements. The Internet of Things (IoT) could contribute significantly to solve these challenges because it allows for remotely controlling the location and conditions of shipments and pro...

Farming nowadays is a complex managerial task that imposes stringent requirements on farm management information systems. In other sectors, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are widely implemented to meet such requirements. This paper assesses the applicability of ERP systems in the agri-food domain by investigating the experiences of agri...

Due to the emergence of the Internet of Things, supply chain control can increasingly be based on virtual objects instead of on the direct observation of physical objects. Object virtualization allows the decoupling of control activities from the handling and observing of physical products and resources. Moreover, virtual objects can be enriched wi...

Moderne kwekerijen zijn vergaand gemechaniseerd. Om in de toenemende behoefte aan up-to-date managementinformatie en keteninformatie te voorzien, wordt veel informatie handmatig geregistreerd in een bedrijfsmanagementsysteem of handmatig verzonden naar externe partijen. Dit is inefficiënt en foutgevoelig. Bovendien blijft veel waardevolle informati...

Farm enterprises2 The objective of this paper is to describe a farm information model and a proof of concept that demonstrates how a collaborative Business Process for farming can be configured using this farm information model. Knowledge to develop this model and a proof of concept is obtained by case study research focusing on the collaborative B...

This article on global food supply chains focuses on food supply chain operations: supply chain logistics, quality management, and information exchange. Specific characteristics of food logistics, logistics network orchestration, and logistics network design are discussed. Intrinsic and extrinsic food quality attributes are the basis for food quali...

The European Future Internet Initiative, called FIWARE, targets in its final and third phase at acceleration of Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SME). The ‘FInish’ accelerator provides grants for realisation of intelligent systems and specifically business to business (B2B) oriented apps for supply chains of perishable products such as food and...

Supply chains are being transformed into agile networks in response the increasing volatility of business environments. The dynamic nature of business collaboration in such networks imposes stringent demands on the enabling software systems. This paper proposes the application of a mass customization approach to meet the great demands on software s...

De baten van digitaal zakendoen worden sterk bepaald door de breedte en intensiteit van het gebruik van elektronische berichten. Een brede acceptatie en invoering van digitaal zakendoen bij de verschillende partijen in potplantenketens is dan ook cruciaal. Together 4 Better (T4B) Plantcenter Europe heeft de afgelopen jaren hierin belangrijke slagen...

In opdracht van Tuinbouw Digitaal heeft LEI Wageningen UR een literatuurstudie gedaan naar apps als vorm van communicatie met consumenten. Bovendien is kwalitatief consumentenonderzoek gedaan naar de sterke en verbeterpunten van de door de groente- en fruitsector ontwikkelde Veggipedia-app. Naar aanleiding van het onderzoek wordt onder andere aanbe...

The European Future Internet Initiative, called FIWARE, targets in its final and third phase at acceleration of Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SME). The ?FInish? accelerator provides grants for realisation of intelligent systems and specifically business to business (B2B) oriented apps for supply chains of perishable products such as food and...

The horticulture and propagation materials sector has been designated as one of the so?called top sectors in which the Netherlands excels globally and that are a government priority. The top sector approach for further innovation is based on public?private partnerships (PPPs) in which businesses, knowledge institutes and the (national) government a...

The food and agribusiness is an important sector in European logistics with a share in the EU road transport of about 20%. One of the main logistic challenges in this sector is to deal with the high dynamics and uncertainty in supply and demand. This paper discusses the opportunities of Future Internet (FI) technologies to addresses the specific de...

Supply chains are increasingly virtualised in response to market challenges and to opportunities offered by nowadays affordable new technologies. Virtual supply chain management does no longer require physical proximity, which implies that control and coordination can take place in other locations and by other partners. This paper assesses how the...

Information and Communication Technology as a Driver for Change in Agri‐food Chains Agri‐food chains will be changed in the coming years by Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Technological trends and economic analysis suggest that ICT will be a major driver for innovation. Satellites and sensors make precision agriculture possible. Mor...

The horticulture and propagation materials sector has been designated as one of the so‐called top sectors in which the Netherlands excels globally and that are a government priority. The top sector approach for further innovation is based on public‐private partnerships (PPPs) in which businesses, knowledge institutes and the (national) government a...

Het DaVinc3i project onderzoekt hoe de Nederlandse sierteeltsector in het virtuele handelsnetwerk zijn leidende concurrentiepositie in wereldwijde sourcing en afzet van bloemen en planten in Europa kan versterken. Informatie- en communicatietechnologie (ICT) heeft een sleutelrol in de virtualisering van deze netwerken. Dit document geeft een overzi...

The food and agribusiness is an important sector in European logistics with a share in the EU road transport of about 20%. One of the main logistic challenges in this sector is to deal with the high dynamics and uncertainty in supply and demand. This paper defines requirements on Future Internet (FI) technologies that have to be met to accomplish t...

What is the aim of this book? Why we have decided to put together contribution from different authors? We don’t want only to describe the status of current development and research in ICT for Agriculture, Food and Environment. We would like to analyse the period of last 10 years in terms of the results achieved in the research area, implementation...

Bedrijfsinformatie is de bron voor keteninformatie. Bovendien kunnen met goed geïntegreerde bedrijfsinformatiesystemen enorme verbeteringen worden gerealiseerd in de efficiëntie, snelheid, kwaliteit (minder fouten) en duurzaamheid van de bedrijfsprocessen. Veel bedrijven hebben echter moeite om geïntegreerde bedrijfsmanagementsystemen in te voeren....

The Dutch floricultural industry is generally appreciated for its world leadership; the Netherlands is the trading hub for the European market. There are two trends affecting this position. First, virtualisation of trade and logistics control enabled by technological progress. Second, internationalisation of markets and production reshapes the mark...

The study presented in this paper shows that the Dutch horticulture is active in the field of information management. Much progress is made, among others in the development and adoption of eBusiness standards. However, the development of information management in the sector is still fragmented and too slow. Furthermore, it is found that most projec...

Demand-driven supply chains are highly dynamic networks of different participants with different allocations of business processes and different modes of control and coordination. Companies must be able to take part in multiple supply chain configurations concurrently and to switch rapidly to new or adjusted configurations. This imposes stringent d...

Information exchange is a crucial factor in modern farm management, especially when the whole agri-food supply chain network is taken into account. This requires flexible information systems for which a common digital infrastructure is needed. Development of such an infrastructure is, technically and organizationally seen, a huge challenge. In this...

Boomkwekerijen moeten zich meer inspannen om te voldoen aan de hogere eisen van hun klanten. Een simulatiemodel geeft de kweker inzicht in de voor zijn bedrijf beste uitlevermethode. ‘Klanten willen hun bomen steeds sneller in hebben en de hoeveelheid die ze afnemen wisselt. Dat vraagt meer van de logistiek’, vertelt Cor Verdouw van het LEI.

In de boomkwekerij is sprake van een grote diversiteit in soorten en vindt de teelt voor het overgrote deel buiten plaats waardoor uitlevering gevoelig is voor weersinvloeden. Een snel en efficiënt uitleversysteem is een grote uitdaging waar veel boomkwekers mee worstelen. LEI en DLV Plant deden in opdracht van het Ministerie van Economie, Landbouw...

Het kunnen beschikken over de juiste, complete informatie op het juiste moment is de basis voor optimale ketensamenwerking. Een snelle, foutloze en efficiënte informatieoverdracht is alleen mogelijk als de informatiesystemen in een keten precies dezelfde taal spreken. Daarvoor moeten data uit het informatiesysteem van de zender automatisch ingeleze...

De eisen aan de logistiek op boomkwekerijen worden hoger: klanten bestellen vaker in kleinere hoeveelheden en vragen korte levertijden. Het blijkt niet eenvoudig om aan deze eisen te voldoen. Daarom hebben LEI, boomkwekers en DLV Plant een spelsimulatiemodel ontwikkeld voor de uitleverlogistiek. Met dit model krijgen kwekers meer inzicht in hun log...

Current dynamic demand-driven networks make great demands on, in particular, the interoperability and agility of information systems. This paper investigates how reference information models can be used to meet these demands by enhancing ICT mass customisation. It was found that reference models for Production and Supply Chain Management do not yet...

The increasing volatility and diversity of demand urge agri-food supply chains to become more demand driven, i.e. sensitive and responsive to demand information of the ultimate consumer. Companies that participate in demand-driven supply chains must manage a high variety and variability of supply chain configurations to meet the specific requiremen...

The growing importance of health in consumption is expected to result in a significant increase of European fruit demand. However, the current fruit supply does not yet sufficiently meet demand requirements. This urges fruit supply chains to become more demand-driven, that is, able to continuously match supply capabilities to changing demand requir...

The key challenge for mastering high uncertainty of both demand and supply is to attune products and business processes in the entire supply chain continuously to customer requirements. Product configurators have proven to be powerful tools for managing demand uncertainty. This paper assesses how configurators can be used for combined product and p...

Agri-food enterprises operate in a complex and dynamic environment. To meet increasing demands of consumers, government and business partners, enterprises continuously have to work on innovations of products, processes and ways of cooperation in agri-food supply chain networks (AFSCN). Hence, a development towards a more knowledge-based economy is...

Purpose – to model demand-driven chain networks on basis of multiple Customer Order Decoupling Points (CODPs). Design/methodology/approach – literature study and a case study in dairy industry, based on in-depth expert interviews. Findings – four main underlying factors of CODP diversity are addressed and modelled. Research limitations/implications...

In dit rapport wordt de huidige situatie op het gebied van integrale digitale informatievoorziening in de tuinbouwsector in kaart gebracht en geanalyseerd. Vervolgens worden de contouren geschetst van een mogelijk programma voor verbetering en integratie van deze digitale informatievoorziening. Hiermee wordt een overzicht geboden van de huidige ini...

Cor. N. Verdouw, dellVniversità di Wageningen, è il coordinatore del subprogetto FoODYNAMO. Il suo articolo ci consente di entrare nella specifica tematica delle filiere alimentari "quidate" dalla domanda (supply chains e Food Chains) una particolare evoluzione concettuale derivata dalla Logistica (Logistic Management) a sua volta inserita nella pi...

The strategic objective of this project is to increase fruit consumption and thereby improve the health and well-being of Europeans and their environment, by taking a total chain approach and identifying bottlenecks and opportunities in the fruit chain from a consumer perspective. In this report a framework for analysis, design and implementation o...