A QFD-based framework for integrating sustainability, risk, and resilience in fragmented fresh food supply chains

Fresh food supply chains composed of small-scale producers and nanostores operate under conditions of fragmented supply and demand, which intensify sustainability challenges and increase exposure to multiple risks. Although sustainability, risk management, and resilience have been extensively studied in agri-food supply chains, these dimensions are commonly analysed separately, particularly in fragmented systems. This study addresses this gap by proposing an integrated framework that links contextual attributes, sustainability criteria, risks, and resilience strategies to support logistics configuration decisions in fresh food supply chains. The framework is developed using a sequential Quality Function Deployment (QFD) approach composed of three interconnected Houses of Quality and supported by multi-expert evaluations. The first stage assesses the influence of contextual attributes on sustainability criteria. The second stage evaluates the impact of supply chain risks on the prioritised criteria. The third stage identifies and ranks resilience strategies according to their ability to mitigate the most critical risks. The results indicate that profitability, waste generation, and demand fulfilment are the sustainability criteria most affected by fragmented supply and demand conditions. Supply, financial, and demand risks emerge as the most critical threats, while multiple sourcing, horizontal collaboration, backup suppliers, facility fortification, and facility capacity expansion are identified as the most relevant resilience strategies. The study contributes to the literature by demonstrating how a sequential QFD framework can integrate sustainability, risk, and resilience within a unified decision-support approach. Practically, it provides managers and policymakers with a structured tool for prioritising risks and selecting resilience strategies in fragmented agri-food supply chains.