Freshness Gauge based cold storage management: A method for adjusting temperature and humidity levels for food quality

As the perishable products market grows, the cold chain system is getting more attention. It is desirable for perishable products to keep a good control throughout the whole logistics process. Data collection and the analysis of products are useful for decision making in logistics and it can also enhance the quality of cold chain management. For these reasons, new technologies like Automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) is getting more attention in cold chain management. In this paper, a concept for measuring quality called Freshness Gauge and an algorithm that adjusts proper temperature and humidity levels by reflecting the quality change of eatable products in refrigerated storage are introduced. Shelf-life was used to estimate the food quality and the Centre-of-gravity model and Genetic Algorithm were also applied to get temperature and humidity levels. The proposed algorithms are expected to achieve keeping food quality longer, therefore, the product loss during refrigeration can be reduced.