SysSensory: a web based decision support system for sensory analysis

Abstract

Sensory analysis is an area of the food industry to evaluate products' organoleptic characteristics. It encompasses a tasting process that produces large amounts of data used both in decisions about the products and to evaluate the tasters. In this context, some tools that usually support Industrial Engineering processes, can help making more reliable and timely decisions. The aim of this work is then to present a decision support system – SysSensory – developed to help food companies' deal with that data, by means of collecting, processing and visualizing it. Therefore, some statistical techniques incorporated in the system are explained, the specification of the system is described and some of the system's user interfaces are presented. SysSensory is considered a valuable contribute for researchers on Sensory Analysis, Statistics, as well as Information Technologies, and also for the food industry, for which it can be an innovative tool.