Big data for agri-food 4.0: Application to sustainability management for by-products supply chain

The bioconversion of lignocellulosic biomass is a promising method for the production of bio-energy, biomolecules and biomaterials. Pretreatment of the lignocellulosic biomass is an essential step in this process. The choice of pretreatment process is a difficult one, and there are currently no clear criteria on which to base this choice. This project, with its sustainability and agri-food perspective, used environmental impacts to assess the various processes and their panels of technologies. The approach developed integrates big data, to improve sustainability management in supply chain design, with the aim of valorising agricultural waste. In five main steps, this approach combines concepts from industry 4.0, sustainability and the agri-food industry. We apply this approach to a case study in the domain of agricultural waste valorisation: the pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass in the rice supply chain. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.