From Industry 4.0 to Agriculture 4.0: How Manage Product Data in Agri-Food Supply Chain for Voluntary Traceability, a Framework Proposed

The agri-food Industry shows numerous actors who perform various activities within the value chain, following national and international regulations and using marketing strategies to promote their products. Often, information related to the product and the processing phases are not appropriately used to improve company and network efficiency or to create market strategies based on voluntary transparency and traceability policies. Moreover, in recent years, the world has witnessed a change in purchasing patterns, involving the consumer who is increasingly attentive to his health and to the quality of the food he buys. Food Citizenship and Food Democracy born, leveraging on transparency, sustainability and food information needs. Some of the technological phenomena typical of Industry 4.0, such as the Internet of Thinghs (IoT) and Analytics, are the most relevant in terms of impact on the market and will act as a driving force towards a real "4.0 transformation". But realize a traceability system is not simple because of the complexity of agri-food supply chain: a lot of actors involved, different business models, environmental variations impacting products and / or processes, and extraordinary climate changes. To address these issues and with a view to supporting the company in the implementation of a voluntary traceability system, a multilayer methodological and technological framework that takes into account more technologies related to Industry 4.0 is proposed.