Improve production-chain efficiency in fish industry by exploitation of existing data for the identification of gold-standard procedures and waste reduction

Every year, 5 Millions tons of Fresh Tuna are caught worldwide. Due to the different methodologies across geographical areas in handling this resource along the production- chain vast waste of resources is happening (Jensen et al., DTU Management 2009), (Asche et al., World Trade Report 2010). As an example, there are no current Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) set for the fish industry as for fish cleaning (Cato, FAO Fisheries Department 1998). This allows differences in resource’s handling which are linked to traditional and cultural heritage that may lead to inefficiencies. Consequently, this ends up in waste of material that could potentially being used. As of today, just the 41% of a caught Tuna can be used for human consumption as canned product while a large room for improvement can be foreseen (De Silva, FAO 2011). The main hurdle for improvement in efficiency and waste reduction is there is no current mapping of procedures used in production-chain in the different world sites (Benjamin et al., Fisherman’s news 2001). Therefore, in order to maximize the usage of resources these are possibly the key challenges we have to face to facilitate transformation:

• The data already being collected are ‘trapped’ in silos today, in the production chain, information needs significant effort of sharing in daily operations to provide clear view on current resource’s handling.
• Potential additional data that could be exploited for identify Gold-standard procedures across the production-chain could derive from:
• Traceability data from sustainability departments.
• Fish welfare and biology data from fisheries.
• Efficiency gains in the supply chain from production plants.

• Collect data regarding resource’s handling from different data sources into a single database.
• Perform analyses on current efficiency percentages being in place in Production- chain.
• Exploit confounding factors that affect efficiency.
• Set indicators and metrics as referential benchmark for production-chain efficiency.
• Draft decision support tool to homogenize approach in production-chain.
• Verify efficacy of decision support tool via pilot testing in a small plant.

• Identification of current standard Operating Procedures in Fish Production Chain Worldwide.
• Identification of “Gold standards”.
• Plan uses of such standards via Pilot Test at Small scale.