# Key Performance Indicators for Food Supply Chain: A Bibliometric and Systematic Literature Review
## 1 Introduction  
Key performance indicators (KPIs) are quantifiable measures used to evaluate an organization's performance against its strategic and operational goals, focusing on improvement [1]. Normally, they stand as a quantifiable measure of performance over time for a given objective. From finance and human resources to marketing and sales, KPIs help every area of the business move forward at the strategic level. Measuring something and consequently evaluating the related performance is extremely important for managers, since these results and trends may constitute the basis for relevant decision making. Indeed, the role of KPIs is that of allowing for evaluating an activity, in order to determine the extent to which the related goals have been achieved [2] or for assessing the convenience of a potential investment (e.g., through Return on Investment), thus permitting to weigh up strategies and behaviors that managers should set. Moreover, another characteristic that makes KPIs so powerful is that their behavior and trend over time can be graphed: by quickly looking at histograms or scatter plots, their interpretation is immediate, clear, and objective. In recent years, performance measurement based on KPIs has literally grown, as supported by [2]. At the time of writing the present manuscript, namely, the first bimester of the year 2025, the Scopus database already proposes 19 new documents published in 2025, all focusing on specific KPIs in precise fields (the research key was \"key performanceindicator\" in the Article Title; the overall outcome is 247 documents with the temporal constraint related to the publishing year). For the interest of readers, worth-of-note examples of documents, allowing a better understanding of the very different implementation fields, are KPIs for port terminal management [3]; KPIs for the pharmaceutical supply chain [4]; KPIs for assessing urban security and safety smartness [5]; KPIs for mechanical tests [6]; KPIs for business success [7]; KPIs for humanitarian logistics [8]; KPIs for higher education and sport programs [9; 10], and for predicting the enterprise gross margin in livestock farms [11]; again, for sport analytics [12]; KPIs for monitoring the prostate cancer screening [13], KPIs for warehouse systems [14], and many other could be mentioned, demonstrating that KPIs can be involved everywhere including, for instance, the tertiary sector. In line with the purpose of this paper, we focused on those studies that presented and evaluated KPIs for the food supply chain (FSC in the following). Among them, [PERSON] [15] determined the extent to which the implementation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) can improve supply chain performance in agri-FSCs. To this end, the author developed a case study on a fruit cooperative using semi-structured interviews and other sources of evidence. [PERSON] et al. [16] have mapped the available sustainability perspectives and indicators, focusing on the Malaysian FSC. These indicators were divided into the three facets of sustainability (economic, environmental, and social), and simultaneously cascaded into three hierarchies (tactical, operational, and strategic). [PERSON] [17] has highlighted various Industry 4.0 technologies and their practices in agri-FSCs. To be more precise, the author recognized 10 KPIs that will benefit decision-making in a digital, data-centered environment. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [18] identified 30 sustainability indicators from various studies in the perishable FSC and sorted them with the help of academic experts. The authors then applied an interpretive structural modeling approach to detect the interrelationship among the indicators. KPIs are very common in literature and several reviews have been published about them, exploring the field from various perspectives. To be more precise, some reviews have evaluated specific application areas of the FSC.