2023 RTP round - Supply Chain Resilience in Australian Food Industry in post pandemic ‘new reality’: Industry 4 approach.

Curtin University, Australia

Updated: almost 2 years ago
Location: Perth, WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Deadline: The position may have been removed or expired!

Status: Opening

Applications open: 8/07/2022
Applications close: 18/08/2022

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About this scholarship

COVID 19 pandemic has created a chaos in global food industry. Closures of restaurants, cafes and food outlets and scaling  down of  the hospitality industries created a ripple effect downstream in food industry, such as destruction of various firm produces due to lack of distribution and/or sales. In general food supply chain has been hugely disrupted. Countries have also suffered in farming and importation of necessary food items to feed the population. In June 2020 United Nations warned that “the world stands on the brink of a food crisis worse than any seen for at least 50 years”. In Australia the food industry has suffered tremendously. KPMG estimates that Australian GDP will shrink by $34.2 billion due to COVID 19. GDP share of Australian food industry will also shrink accordingly. KPMG also predicts that in the near, mid and long term Australian food and agribusiness sector will suffer from “disrupted supply chains, global trade impact and workforce management”. 
It is envisaged that in post-pandemic ‘new reality’ local sourcing of input materials, robust transportation and distribution network and risk management will dominate in designing and managing Australian agri-food supply chains. Maintaining long term agility and resilience will be the norm for future agri-food supply chain in Australia and elsewhere. Food industry must be proactive in anticipating any disruptions and reactively plan for recovery from the disaster. The questions remain how all these can be achieved? How technology can facilitate the ‘new reality’ agri-food supply chain? The answer lies in making supply chain ‘smart’ using state of the art digitization using such technologies as Internet of things (IoT),  blockchain, machine learning, predictive analytics, among others. In other words the requirements of Industry 4.0 must be adopted to make agri-food supply chain more proactive in predicting disasters and take mitigated actions. 
While various perspectives of Industry 4.0 are available this project concentrates on Industry 4.0 as an enabler of cyber-physical integration using various technologies having sustained impact on logistics and supply chain. In the last four years Australian government has promoted the adoption of Industry 4.0 principles in various industrial sectors. 
This project will have multiple phases. In the first phase a detailed exploratory study will be undertaken to map the extent of adoption and practices of Industry 4 principles in Australian agri-food industry. In the second phase comprehensive study will be undertaken to gauge the Agri-food industry's response to designing and managing their supply chains in the post-pandemic ‘new reality’ era. This will primarily include analysing and measuring the resilience of the supply chains to mitigate the anticipated disasters. Recent extant literature on supply chain resilience will be the benchmark of resilient supply chains in ‘new reality’ era. Feasibility of the resilient supply chain as found in phase two will be estimated comparing the facilitating conditions obtained from first phase of the project. 

An Internship opportunity may be available with this project.


  • Future Students

  • Faculty of Business and Law

  • Higher Degree by Research

  • Australian Citizen
  • Australian Permanent Resident
  • New Zealand Citizen
  • Permanent Humanitarian Visa

  • Merit Based

The annual scholarship package (stipend and tuition fees) is approx. $60,000 - $70,000 p.a.

 

Successful HDR applicants for admission will receive a 100% fee offset for up to 4 years, stipend scholarships, valued at $28,854 p.a. for up to a maximum of 3.5 years, are determined via a competitive selection process. Applicants will be notified of the scholarship outcome in November 2022. 

 

For detailed information, visit: Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarships | Curtin University, Perth, Australia.


Scholarship Details

1


All applicable HDR courses


• 1st or high 2nd class honours degree in relevant area, or a good Masters degree in relevant area
• Research experience needed
• Publications preferable 


Application process

If this project excites you, and your research skills and experience are a good fit for this specific project, you should contact the Project Lead (listed below in the enquires section) via the Expression of Interest (EOI) form.


Enrolment Requirements

Eligible to enrol in a Higher Degree by Research Course at Curtin University by March 2023


Enquiries

To enquire about this project opportunity that includes a scholarship application, contact the Project lead, Professor Mohammed Quaddus via the EOI form above.



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