Editorial - Special section “Selected Papers from the Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Food Processing and Operations of the MAS 2013 Conference (Athens, September 25–27, 2013)" for International Journal of Food Engineering

The increasing demand for high-quality products, short production lead times and reduced costs has encouraged manufacturing organizations to introduce new concepts and changes in their systems to improve their process efficiency. Numerical modeling and discrete-event simulation are efficient and powerful tools for simulating the several processes in the food industry. Looking at the first technique, numerical methods (e.g., finite difference, finite element and finite volume analysis) have been successfully adopted by many researchers to describe, for instance, the heating/cooling processes in the food industry [1]. Indeed, many thermal processes involving of solid foods are based on heat and moisture exchanges between a solid food body and medium flow. Heat transfer through solid foods is normally modeled by Fourier’s equation of heat conduction and moisture transfer is generally described by Fick’s law of diffusion [2]. For thermal processes of fluid foods, the conservation of mass, momentum and energy in a fluid should be considered together. The continuity equation and Navier–Stokes equations are used to describe fluid flow [3]. Similarly, simulation modeling and analysis have become a popular technique for analyzing the effects of these changes without actual implementation or assignment of resources [4]. The food processing industry is a typical manufacturing sector where a system can be easily and adequately analyzed with discrete event simulation models. At the same time some statistical analyses and decision support systems can be applied to the food sector in order to find the best alternative among different possible solutions [5]. Overall, modeling and simulation techniques offer potential to solve several critical issues in the food industry [6, 7]. On the basis of these premise above, this special section collects the best papers presented at the international workshop on “Modeling and Simulation of Food Processing and Operations”, held in Athens (Greece), on September 25–27, 2013, during the Modeling and Applied Simulation (MAS) 2013 conference. The workshop gave the possibility to present the up-to-date results achieved by applying modeling and simulation to the food industry. Therefore, our aim with this special issue is to propose the highest-quality contributions related to that research field. Overall, the MAS 2013 conference received numerous submissions, with approx. 30 papers included in the conference proceedings. Among those papers, 3 were accepted, after peer review, for publication on the special section. The papers we present in this special section cover a wide range of topics related to simulation and modeling in the food industry. In the first paper, Latorre-Biel et al. present a decision support methodology for improving the design and management of an olive oil manufacturing facility. The decision support system grounds on the development of a Petri net model of the system, the simulation of its behavior under a selected set of alternative configurations and, finally, the choice of the most promising one by means of an optimization algorithm. The second paper, by Marchini et al., describes the results of a research project, aimed at developing a simulation doi 10.1515/ijfe-2014-5001 International Journal of Food Engineering 2014; 10(4): 543–544 Authenticated | eleonora.bottani@unipr.it author's copy Download Date | 12/5/14 10:03 AM model of the water supply system of a dairy company, located in Parma, Italy. The main idea of the research project was to reduce the water consumption of the company examined, which is also a main issue for the whole dairy industry as well as for many is a very topical issue in many other industrial fields. The approach developed aims to investigate, through process simulation, the areas of the plant where the efficiency of the water supply system can be improved by means of simple plant modifications. Thanks to the simulation model and subsequent analyses, a final scenario of the water supply system was identified, which allows savings up to 30% of water compared to the original plant configuration. In the third manuscript, Bruzzone et al. propose a model of a fresh goods supply chain, with the purpose of investigating food contamination, with a particular attention to the context of fresh goods. The authors are motivated by the fact that contamination phenomena are becoming more a more critical in the fresh food supply chain, and that there is the need for identifying possible countermeasures for mitigating the impact of those phenomena. An experimental analysis is finally carried out by the authors to validate the models and the approach proposed. Thanks to the variety of topics addressed, we believe that this special issue provides the scientific community with valuable information and knowledge in the field of food processing, with a particular focus on the use of modeling and simulation for decision support in that field. Obviously, the value added of a special issue is only as good as the contributions of the manuscripts it receives, and the quality of the feedback provided by its reviewers. We are therefore very grateful to all the authors, who supported this special issue through their contributions, and we are indebted to the reviewers, who helped us in managing the papers received in a timely manner and provided useful and professional reports about the papers. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the Editor in Chief of International Journal of Food Engineering, which gave us the possibility of organizing the special session and helped us in its successful completion.