A bibliometric review of progress and trends in food factory design research

Summary Food factory design (FFD) affects production costs, production safety and food quality. Moreover, as consumer demand, product planning, policies and legislation, raw material supplies, manufacturing philosophies and environmental consciousness change, FFD should also change. In this study, we used bibliometric analysis to examine articles on a wide range of topics related to FFD published in Web of Science from 2012 to 2022. We used collaborative network analysis, co‐occurrence analysis, cluster analysis, timeline mapping and term burst detection to achieve the following objectives: (i) summarising the annual changes in the number of publications; (ii) detecting influential countries and institutions, major research areas, context and history and representative studies at different times; and (iii) identifying frontiers and forecasting development trends in terms of factory construction and new production modes, new processes and product manufacturing technology, optimisation of production systems and processes, intelligent manufacturing, environmental protection and sustainable development. The findings of this study provide an effective means of assessing the performance of FFD research. They also help enterprises and researchers to identify important trends in FFD and provide support for decision‐making and policy formulation, and future directions for research and teaching activities.