Summary

Digital innovation lies at the heart of value-adding chicken meat including advanced consignment and traceability systems that provides for product quality assurance and consumer engagement. It is key to optimising individual stages of production systems such as day to day shed operations, optimising inputs and meeting product specifications, but also flows into and through logistics and distribution networks. This proposal will take a two-phased approach to these inter-related Scoping Studies. A design-led workshop (Phase #1) will develop the framework for the subsequent fact-finding studies that will inform digital innovation in the chicken red meat industry including traceability systems and platforms for digital operations. The approach will leverage AgriFutures’ networks and knowledge to recruit a select group of producers, processors and technology providers to come together and identify and prioritise opportunities to realise the value of digital based innovation. Carefully curated and facilitated, the 1 workshop will use ‘design principles’ to ensure the subsequent information collection is well-designed, beneficiary-focused and impact-oriented, that key thematic areas identified in the scoping studies are evidence-based, that solution hypotheses, technology concepts and timelines are credible, that consulted people and resources are suitable; and that the potential for impact is high. Phase #2 will use these learning to engage with the wider supply chain in a focussed (and time/resource efficient) way through site visitations, interviews and desk-top analyses. The Scoping studies will include key challenges, key innovation foci and pathways to enabling that innovation that include social (including educational), institutional (including regulatory and business) and technologies.

Program

Chicken Meat

Research Organisation

Food Agility CRC Limited

Objective Summary

Digital technology holds huge promise for innovation but the challenge of innovation is typically not technology based but people based. The overall objective of this project is to provide a Scoping study that will inform strategies that will carry the optimal mix of deliberate and emergent components. It is the objective of the initial (Phase #1) workshop to understand how different players in the value chain decide why (including why not), what and how to implement digital innovations. The Scoping study will be framed around the three horizons of innovation, which for the purposes of this proposal is given by: Horizon 1 (shorter term)- doing things better; Horizon 2 (mid term)- doing things differently, and Horizon 3 (longer term)- doing different things. This must include understanding the business model innovation factors as this will ensure correct positioning of digital innovation as a set of tangible benefits (cost reduction/increased profit).
Phase #2 will involve focussed endeavour through direct interactions with stakeholders on issues around:
1. Uses of existing data and what new data should be collected and how could it be used;
2. Challenges and opportunities for improving data collection, use and transfer;
3. Identifying barriers and strategies to overcome challenges or maximise opportunities, including infrastructure, education (digital literacy) and incentives for data-driven/facilitated innovation;
4. Data trust and governance, including the relationship between processors and producers; and
5. Identifying relevant digital innovations from other sectors and industries and consider how these may be applied to the poultry red meat industry.