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Supply chains take joint responsibility for providing safe and high-quality products. In food distribution, ethics involves product flows and information transparency. The analysis in this chapter points to the demand for adequate information, the value of freedom and human well-being as ethically pertinent issues internal to mackerel supply chains, which feature interaction between a focal supply chain and its business, societal and natural environmental context. The proposed models depict individual food supply chains as mediating resources in their context. Ethics therefore creates a new understanding of how information can help secure safe, quality food supplies.

Much attention is now being paid to traceability systems which provide information on the production and distribution history of a product, especially in the food industry. Since the purpose of the system is focused on consumer service, the system is generally independent of a main management system, and therefore, the obtained traceability information is not applicable to the solution of production and distribution management problems. For example, dispatching the order information of parts, which is necessary to the traceability system, has generally been managed in MRP modules. Furthermore, sharing rigid inventory information of an individual product, which is easily obtained from the traceability system, can enlarge and extend the performance of supply chain management (SCM) systems. Horikawa et al. (2005) proposed a traceability information system which cooperates with ERP. The system comprises three-layered modules, namely physical logistics layer, ERP layer and independent data management layer. Traceability is realised with an information exchange among the three layers. This structure has the advantage over other applications at practical level as it replaces some modules to more suitable components such as more commonly available ERP package.

In recent years, business transactions through electronic data interchange (EDI) have spread globally; usefulness of EDI has been anticipated in the market. Although EDI transactions require a standard code format, various problems have occurred through use of such code in actual markets. This paper presents a new data transmission code for seafood EDI, expanding conventional standard formats of the product code. Subsequently, we present a new EDI system model using the new code which includes two main functions: product definitions and learning of code transmission. The system test in a market showed efficiency and effectiveness of the model.

In modern assembly lines, it is commonly observed that a worker chooses some adequate part from several parts racks and assembles a product. To enhance performance and quality of such processes, it is important to confirm that an adequate part is selected. To address that problem, we proposed a loss-detection model using Kanban cards. However, the model presents some problem such as types of loss occurrences. As described herein, we present a new discrete-time Markov Chain model to describe the loss types. The model performance is presented using numerical experiments. Furthermore, results show that undetected-loss risk becomes the maximum when the transition probabilities are identical.

Farmers' markets have attracted considerable attention in Japan recently. However, the farmers' markets pursuit the multiple perspective of management, at the same time, there are many problems of ensuring the diversification of product and improving the supplement system of product and so on. In this paper, we have proposed an information system that can support both sales management and inventory management to solve these problems. We also introduced the information systems to a farmer market which is an agricultural producer's cooperative corporation in Iwate. The system makes it possible to acquire inventory information within every given time. The server sends each farmer e-mail of current sales status and update inventory status periodically on web pages according to the inventory information. Furthermore, we propose to create a sales forecasting model of time series with actual data, obtained from information system, which supports to construct the marketing strategy and cultivation plan. The aim of the research is to obtain management guideline for farmers' markets.

In a modern automobile assembly line, kanban cards or e-kanban cards are used for parts supply. In the line, if a worker would assemble incorrect part to a car body, an inferior product may be shipped to the following production process. Such inferior products will be caught at the inspection process however suspension of production line will occur. In this paper, we propose a loss detection model for a work station which requires installing certain parts. Relationship between number of conveyed car bodies and consumed parts are compared to detect the loss, where we use kanban cards to count parts consumption. We present mathematical models to detect losses and some numerical examples to show stochastic performance of the proposed loss detection model.

Under variety production circumstances, it becomes more important to manage production and distribution history information of each individual product. Information system tracing the history is generally referred to Traceability System. Traceability system has gradually obtained much attention, especially on food industries. Since the purpose of the existing traceability system is focused mainly on the consumer service, the system itself is generally independent of main management system and, therefore, the obtained traceability information may not be a contributing factor to the solution of production and distribution management problems. In this paper, we propose a three-layered traceability system, which consists of Application Service Provider, ASP, layer, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP, layer and Physical logistics layer. A prototype system is implemented under scenario of Processed Seafood Industry.

This paper considers the problem of how luggages should be assign to each truck for the transportation system consists of a depot, a fixed area and two types of luggages, called schedule problem. The main purpose of this paper is to propose a procedure for the problem subject to keep the balance of work loads among truck drivers. The procedure is based on 3 (heuristic) rules for replacing the addresses of each luggage with the ‘ conventional address ,’ converting size of each luggage into ‘ weight ’ and introducing a measure to keep the balance of work loads. The procedure consists of three stages according to ‘ priority ’ of the types of luggages. A case study is presented that demonstrate the practical usefulness of the procedure.