Cost Factor Food Waste in Swiss Hospitals. A case study on food service processes to develop a food service optimisation tool for facility management
type: CreativeWork
description: Purpose: The need for more transparency, efficiency and effectiveness in Swiss hospitals puts facility management departments into the position to act. One action might be seen in optimising processes. And one of these processes is the food service process, which ranks second in terms of costs. This process has the characteristic that process waste becomes visible as food waste along the entire process. From a facility management perspective the appearance as well as the amount of food waste in the various process steps give the opportunity to detect optimization potentials. With this the facility management helps the core business to meet the overall targets by optimising their own processes. The object of study is limited to Swiss hospitals. This research creates significant contri-bution to knowledge by developing a prototype assessment tool for process optimisation, based upon the specific example of generating waste during the process of food service. Methodology: For that, a multiple case study is conducted, applying a mixed method embedded qualitative research design. The first step comprises a literature review, providing the theoretical basis for this research work. The following data collection during fieldwork splits into two phases. Fieldwork phase 1 and phase 2 each consists of three sources of data collection. For fieldwork phase 1 they are a) semi-standardised observations with unstandardised interviews for informant verifica-tion, b) focus groups and c) collection of secondary data. For fieldwork phase 2 they are a) semi-standardised observations with unstandardised interviews for informant verification, b) collection of secondary data and c) various measurements of quantification. Validation of the results and findings during the research is realised in a focus group with experts. Data collected is analysed and visual-ised in matrices and by descriptive statistics. Findings: This thesis contains detailed food waste measurements from a facility manag…
abstract: Purpose: The need for more transparency, efficiency and effectiveness in Swiss hospitals puts facility management departments into the position to act. One action might be seen in optimising processes. And one of these processes is the food service process, which ranks second in terms of costs. This process has the characteristic that process waste becomes visible as food waste along the entire process. From a facility management perspective the appearance as well as the amount of food waste in the various process steps give the opportunity to detect optimization potentials. With this the facility management helps the core business to meet the overall targets by optimising their own processes. The object of study is limited to Swiss hospitals. This research creates significant contri-bution to knowledge by developing a prototype assessment tool for process optimisation, based upon the specific example of generating waste during the process of food service. Methodology: For that, a multiple case study is conducted, applying a mixed method embedded qualitative research design. The first step comprises a literature review, providing the theoretical basis for this research work. The following data collection during fieldwork splits into two phases. Fieldwork phase 1 and phase 2 each consists of three sources of data collection. For fieldwork phase 1 they are a) semi-standardised observations with unstandardised interviews for informant verifica-tion, b) focus groups and c) collection of secondary data. For fieldwork phase 2 they are a) semi-standardised observations with unstandardised interviews for informant verification, b) collection of secondary data and c) various measurements of quantification. Validation of the results and findings during the research is realised in a focus group with experts. Data collected is analysed and visual-ised in matrices and by descriptive statistics. Findings: This thesis contains detailed food waste measurements from a facility manag…
author: Leiblein, G
keywords: TX341 Nutrition. Foods and food supply
date published: 2019-07
date modified: 2026-07-24T06:30:28Z
provider: Liverpool Jon Moores University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Liverpool John Moores University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.24377/LJMU.t.00011042