Improving Management Methodology of Vegetable Oil Enterprises: an Integrated Process, Quality, and Digital Framework

The vegetable oil and fats industry is strategically important for food security and agro-industrial development, yet its enterprises are often managed through fragmented, technically oriented practices that lag behind the sector's growing technological, regulatory, and market complexity. This study aims to develop an integrated methodological framework for improving the management of vegetable oil (oil-fat) industry enterprises. A qualitative, design-oriented methodology was applied, combining a narrative synthesis of international literature published mainly between 2019 and 2026 with conceptual framework construction and an illustrative case application to Uzbekistan. The results show that technological, quality, lean, digital, and strategic management tools generate managerial value only when they are embedded in a coordinated management mechanism. On this basis, a four-pillar Integrated Management Improvement Framework is proposed, covering technological-operational modernization, integrated quality-safety-environmental management, digital process management, and strategic performance management, and operationalized through an Enterprise Management Maturity Index. Applied to Uzbekistan's more than 240 oil-fat enterprises, the framework reveals a gap between policy-driven growth targets and actual managerial maturity, especially in digital process integration and strategic performance measurement. The study contributes a sector-specific, multi-pillar diagnostic instrument that links previously separate management literatures and provides a basis for future empirical validation.