Improving food preparedness in Swedish municipalities from a supply chain perspective - a multiple case study

Sammanfattning

Title Improving food preparedness in Swedish municipalities from a supply chain perspective - a multiple case study Authors Ellen Persson & Vera Hansen Contribution This thesis has been a complete collaboration between the two authors. Each author has been involved in every part of the process and contributed equally. Supervisor Andreas Norrman – Division of Engineering Logistics, Faculty of Engineering, Lund University Background Recently, due to the increasingly uncertain state of the world through pandemics, wars and other supply chain disruptions, preparedness and food preparedness are appearing on the agenda to a higher extent. However, not much material with guidelines regarding how municipalities should be working with food preparedness exists currently. This is needed to increase the food preparedness and improve municipal food preparedness work in Sweden. Problem Definition and Purpose Due to the gaps in theory presented in the background, it is clear that common material with guidelines and recommendations for how Swedish municipalities should work, in the area of food preparedness, is needed. This master thesis will attempt to fill this gap. The purpose of this master thesis is therefore to study different Swedish municipalities’ food preparedness work and deduce how they can increase their food preparedness within the public meal supply chains. More specifically, we studied how municipalities work with food preparedness, what challenges and success factors exist related to food preparedness work, as well as how different municipal conditions affect food preparedness work. Theory Previous studies on the area of municipal food preparedness have mainly not used a supply chain perspective. They found that collaboration is important and challenging, and that a lack of resources is a big issue in Swedish municipalities. They also found that laws can be a large issue – mainly because many laws are unclear and do not clearly define what municipalities should be doing, and because the Swedish Public Procurement Act complicates purchasing and makes local procurement complicated. Method This thesis uses an abductive, qualitative and cross-sectional approach through a multiple case study with 10 Swedish municipalities. Information has mainly been gathered through interviews with 1-3 employees per municipality and some other documents. The interviews have been coded before within-case analyses as well as a cross-case analysis have been conducted. Before the multiple case study, a preliminary study was conducted through a survey and an expert interview to get a better overview of the current state. The survey was sent to all 290 municipalities in Sweden and received responses from 101 of these. Conclusions In some aspects of the food preparedness work – e.g. having one main supplier, using both freeze dried foods and foods with longer shelf lives in the preparedness stock, using the risk matrix for risk assessment, using avoidance, reduction and transfer as risk mitigation methods, and using simulation exercises – all case municipalities were very similar, while other aspects – e.g. having a centralized or decentralized warehousing strategy, finances, and the collaboration strategy within the municipality – differed a lot. Main challenges related to food preparedness work were found to be the Swedish Public Procurement Act, a lack of money, and unclear laws. The greatest success factors related to food preparedness work were having passionate employees, and adapting the food preparedness strategy to the municipality’s specific context. It was found that some working processes depend highly on the municipality’s specific conditions, mostly their geographic location and their size.