The world is facing a food shortage as the world’s population increases and arable land decreases. Despite this, the food industry is wasteful, and 30% - 40% of all produced food is lost before reaching the end consumer. Emerging technologies aim to increase the amount of food that can be grown per m2 or allow the growing of food in climates or on lands previously impossible. Four main farming techniques utilising these emerging technologies are Controlled Environment Agriculture, Hydroponic Farming, Urban Farming and Vertical farming. When used together, these techniques form the basis for what can be called a Plant Factory. Despite the positive effects these technologies have on the production rate, few Plant Factories have managed to achieve profitability. By creating support for developing the post-harvesting system for a plant factory, this thesis aims to aid in the development of profitable plant factories. The thesis uses Design Research Methodology to achieve this aim in three parts. The first part identifies the underlying factors of the post-harvesting system affecting plant factory profitability. The second presents a set of support components that will aid the developers to improve key factors affecting profitability. The third part is a case study where the support components applicability at targeting the key factors are evaluated, and suggestions for further improvements and testing of the support is suggested. Further, using Design Research Methodology, the methods used to develop support in this thesis are presented to easily be replicated by other researchers to aid them in developing support for other industries and circumstances. The suitability of the developed support was tested using the principles of an initial DS-II. The developed support proved very useful for the investigated case, and with its conditions, the application evaluation was considered a partial success. Two key factors were successfully improved and indicated that the intended support is ready for a comprehensive DS-II. A third support component needs more work to provide the intended support fully. Therefore a second PS iteration is recommended before a comprehensive DS-II is done to increase its value.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mdh-56013 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Antser, Charlie, Lundvall, Kimmy |
| Publisher | Mälardalens högskola, Akademin för innovation, design och teknik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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