Designing a decision support system for tasting panels

Abstract

Tasting Panels are used in Sensory Analysis in order to evaluate products according to the way they are perceived by human senses. In this context, the main job of a professional taster is to assess the sensorial characteristics of products, for example in the food industry. Evaluating the individual performance of the tasters is thus essential, so the results produced are as reliable as possible. The tasting process usually generates a large amount of data that is used in decisions about the products and can also be used to evaluate the tasters. The main objective of this work is to specify and conceptualize a Decision Support System (DSS) to help managing and handling the referred data. This is considered a valuable contribution, since there are no known technological decision tools to support the tasting process.