Perception of Employees in the Dairy Industry towards Digital-Smart Tracking Systems: A Case Study on Ezine Cheese Producers

Abstract

In the digital era, food industry is facing to use digital-smart tracking systems for sustainable food quality and safety. By the increasing digital solutions during farm to fork processes, employees from each section should be a part of the digitalization and job definitions should be shifted to include digital process management. In this study, we aimed to determine current perception and resistance status of employees in dairy industry about digital-smart tracking systems. The empirical survey relies on a sample consisting of nearly 30 SMEs and 150 employees at different parts of farm to fork processes, including Ezine Cheese producer companies in Ezine region, Çanakkale, Türkiye. As we expected, most of employees knows digital-vehicle tracking systems. They believed that digital-tracking systems’ necessity to transparency in food-value chain, quality systems, international trade and logistics. Due to heavy workload and hacking concerns, they resisted to digitalization and sustainability processes.  Effective awareness and digital-security trainings should be done for food value-chain employees to reach expected digitalization targets in food industry.