The EURO Working Group (EWG) Retail Operations: Food Waste Management – Second Digital Meeting

Sandra Transchel, Alexander Hübner | 01.04.2021

The purpose of the EURO Working Group on Retail Operations (denoted as EWG on Retail Ops) is to advance the development and application of Operations Research (OR) methods, techniques, and tools in the field of Retail Operations.

The second digital meeting of the EWG Retail Ops took place on March 26th, 2021, and attracted 57 participants, from U.S., Asia and Europe, and was organized by Sandra Transchel (Kuehne Logistics University) and Alexander Huebner (Technical University Munich).

Food waste is one of the great social and environmental challenges of our time. About one third of the produced food goes uneaten. Operations Research methods are appropriate tools to contribute in reducing food waste as the talks the in the workshop have shown.

The workshop was composed of one keynote speech and three presentations from Ph.D. students. Arzum Akkas from the Boston University gave the keynote speech on “Reducing Food Waste: An Operations Management Research Agenda.” Afterward, it followed Tobias Winkler from the Technical University Munich, who talked about “The retailers perspective on food waste prevention” and Navid Mohamadi from the Kuehne Logistics University, who gave a presentation on “Supply chain coordination for perishable products under “minimum life on receipt” (MLOR) agreements.” Finally, Nicole Perez Becker from University of Luxembourg presented her topic on “Strategic Behavior and Inventory Decisions in the Presence of Waste Cost.” Subsequently, all participants had the opportunities to meet the presenters in separate virtual breakout rooms for further elaborate on tools and techniques to reduce food waste.