Resilient reverse logistics with blockchain technology in sustainable food supply chain management during COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 which is a global problem affects the all supply chains throughout the world. One of the supply chains most affected by COVID-19 is food supply chains. Since the sustainable food supply chain processes are complex and vulnerable in terms of product variety it has been negatively affected by the operational effects of COVID-19. While the problems experienced in the supply chain processes and raw material constraints caused stops in production the importance of new business models and production approaches came to the fore. One of the issues of increasing importance is the adoption of reverse logistics activities in sustainable food supply chains and increasing the resilience of food supply chains by integrating blockchain technology into processes. However adapting blockchain technology to increase the resilience of reverse logistics activities in the food supply chain has advantages as well as risks that need to be considered. Therefore it is aimed to determine these risks by using fuzzy synthetic evaluation method for eliminating the risks of blockchain adaptation for flexible reverse logistics in food supply chains to increase resiliency. The novelty of this study is that besides discussing about the benefits of BC-T it is to identify the risks it can create to eliminate these risks and to guide the establishment of resilience in reverse logistics activities of SFSCs. According to results the risks with the highest value among the subrisks are determined as data security risks. Data management risks are calculated as the risk with the highest value.