Contribution of quality tools for reducing food waste in university canteen

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to implement the quality tools for reducing food waste in Woldia University (WU) canteen (Ethiopia). Universities are one of the main sources of food waste among food catering industries. In WU canteen, it is observed that most of the generated food wastes are goes to landfill. This has a direct impact on the environment. This paper proposes a methodology to tackle this problem. First, food items which contribute by 80% of food waste in the university are identified with the help of Pareto chart. Then the cause and effect diagram is used to identify the main causes or reason for these food items to be wasted. Finally, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is implemented for reducing food waste through customer satisfaction. This reduces significant portion of food waste as the food waste in the canteen is directly related to customer satisfaction.