CLOSED: Sustainable Utilisation of Inflight Food Resources
CLOSED: Real-time Detection of Fuel Leaks in Underground Piping
17/04/2020
Singapore NEA Electronic Waste
28/04/2020
| City: | Singapore |
| Challenge Title: | Sustainable Utilisation of Inflight Food Resources |
| Challenge Owner: | Singapore Airlines |
| Challenge Website: | https://bit.ly/2RIuOXI |
| Challenge Award: | SGD 30,000 of prize money for each winner |
| Other Awards: | Opportunity to work with SIA on tackling an issue that potentially will make a considerable impact to the company’s sustainability practices and pioneer a new way to decrease food waste on aboard flights. Opportunity to test in Singapore and scale regionally or globally, on a city-by-city basis |
| Theme / Sector: | Digitalization of industry |
| Challenge Blurb: | Singapore Airlines (SIA) is a global company dedicated to providing air transportation services of the highest quality to its customers and maximising returns for the benefit of its shareholders and employees. SIA is regularly ranked as the World’s Best Airlines. SIA constantly seeks to ensure that their operations are carried out in a responsible manner. In FY2017/18, they identified three Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations that are relevant to their sustainability strategy and the long-term targets they aim to achieve in the future. One of this is the goal to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns through initiatives like reducing food wastage on board, optimising uplift quantities of in-flight items and increasing the use of sustainable ingredients for inflight meals. SIA has some ongoing efforts harnessing technology and data analytics to better predict customers’ consumption patterns, for example, so as to further reduce cabin food waste. Food trays are delivered to the airplane in trolleys and stored in the plane kitchen/galley. Main courses meant to be heated are delivered in oven racks. The cabin crew heats up the main courses and places them on the trays to serve to passengers. The system should be able to track original amount of food before it goes out to passengers. In plane, passenger receives food. Some finish what they were served, some have uneaten or partially eaten food left on their trays. Trays are collected back by cabin crew in the trolleys. Any leftover food remains on the trays. Any uneaten main courses are returned to the oven racks. Trolleys are returned to the kitchen and stored there. Currently, scanning technology is used to measure food waste generated from flights at a central facility offsite. Unconsumed food from each flight is counted and measured after the plane returns to Singapore. Although this allows the airline to get an initial sense of how much food is wasted, the tracking is limited to what is captured visually. This may not always be a true reflection of actual food wastage generated, for example, partially consumed food and side dishes are not being captured currently as the food may be covered by plate, cup or trash. The scanning process also happens at an offsite facility, which makes the process cumbersome and might contribute to some inaccuracy of tracking. The process of measuring food waste is also still a rather manual process, requiring precious human resources to execute. SIA hopes to develop a more comprehensive system to measure the volume of inflight food wastage for both partially consumed and unconsumed food while on-board flights. The data collected will enable SIA to compare amount of food consumed [compare against what?] as well as gather insights on food consumption patterns, anticipate travellers’ _needs, and make more informed decisions on food catering and transport for flights. |
| Challenge Description: |
Problem
Statement
How might we track and measure inflight
food waste effectively and accurately so that we can manage food resources
more sustainably?
What We Are Looking For A prototype solution demonstrating an integrated system capable of: Tracking and measuring food wastage accurately during each flight Tracking and measuring consumption levels (consumed, partially consumed, unconsumed) of inflight food and inventory-managed consumables such as: o Airline meal (main) Fresh juices, fruits, cheese (perishables) Dry food (biscuits, chips) Desserts (ice cream, cakes) Drinks (canned soft drinks, alcoholic beverages) The solution should meet the following performance criteria in their proposal: System should be easy to use and is an automated process that does not required significant manual efforts by cabin crew.System should be implementable for Economy Class flights and not require major change to existing inflight processes. Solution should provide SIA with a better understanding of food consumption to manage cost better. Data collected can be used to generate insights and food consumption patterns to drive more sustainable practices and reduce inflight food wastage.For the purpose of the prototype, a report in the form of an excel/csv output is sufficient.Final solution should meet FAA requirements and regulations There are no restrictions on the geographic location of the problem solvers who may choose to apply to this challenge. However, the prototype needs to be demonstrated in Singapore. |
| Open for Submissions: | 1 April 2020 |
| Deadline for Submissions: | 5 June 2020, 1600 hours (SGT/GMT +8) |
| Finalist Announcement: | TBA |
| Winner Announcement: | TBA |
| Who Can Apply: | Open to international participants |
| Registration Details: | Submit online at: https://www.openinnovation.sg/challenges/sustainable-utilisation-of-inflight-food-resources |
For application assistance: please contact Quercus Group
