Waste Control in Catering Company: Decision Tools

This paper intends to characterize the food waste of a unit, in which a Collective Restoration Company (ERC) operates, through the daily collection of data and monitoring of the amount of waste produced, per meal period, in the observed time horizon. The treatment and analysis of the collected data allowed to point out a set of performance indicators that could characterize food waste over time, according to the following categories: i) food waste index (ADI), ii) number of meals waste “(NRD) and iii) generated waste accumulator (ADG). For these indicators, several representation (visualization and synthesis) supports were identified and studied to create a dashboard that is intended to be objective and intuitive concerning the reading of waste generated in an ERC. The aim of the work in progress is to develop a proposal for the representation of waste indicators, which allows the identification of consumption patterns, contributing to daily planning and decision making in ERCs. Developments in progress are intended to contribute to reducing the levels of waste through ongoing support in the planning and preparation of menus. Resource management and good operating practices require simple, objective, replicable and ideally inexpensive collection procedures. In this sense, a compromise solution is presented between the operationalization of the collection (observations and representation), the details of the data collected and their synthesis and visualization in an operational dashboard. The applicability of the proposal under development (indicators and dashboard) was subject to some tests with real data of an ERC, being the current study a first contribution to the treatment of the sustainability problems generated by the wastes produced in this sector of activity.