Cambridge School Dedicated To Honor Civil Rights Activists

In an attempt to bring greater efficiency to meal preparation and production, the Food Services Department is computerizing parts its meal-planning operations.

A new $150,000 computer should lead to a 2 percent savings in the undergraduate food budget within two years. Frank J. Weissbecker, director of the department, said recently.

By that time, the computer will have paid for itself in cost savings, added Dale Hennessy, executive dietician and administrative manager.

The new system is part of a University effort to improve its computer facilities.

Harvard has also recently purchased three new VAX computers worth more than $200,000 each, added more than 25 new terminals in the Science Center, and established seven new offices to monitor and maintain the University's computers.

The Food Services system is expected to improve efficiency by storing information on food inventories, standardizing menus and recipes for all undergraduate dining halls, and making better cost projections, Hennessy said.

The new computer will feature a memory which will compile a list of which foods students like and dislike, and will store a two-year history of the number of patrons served on a particular day, she added.

The computer will eventually take the burden off managers whose time was wasted on paperwork and reports, but will not reduce employees, said Hennessy, who directs the Food Services computer program.

The system is now being prepared for operation by Hennessy and her assistant, who enter data at the terminals in the Freshman Union Food Services office.

A new terminal will be installed in the Union in January and over the next two years, five more terminals will be added to complete the system--one each at Quincy, Adams, Dunster-Mather, the Quad and the central kitchens, which serve five upperclass Houses, Hennessy said.

Proven Results

The University of Texas introduced the same computer system in August, said Marsha Beckerman, an official in food services there. She added, "Cooking was such an inexact science before computerization."

Other colleges using similar food service management software include Duke University, UCLA, the Universities of Georgia, Wisconsin and Minnesota, Nancy Sullivan, a spoeksman at Concept Systems Inc which manufactures the systems, said recently.

Michael Foraker, director of food services at UCLA, explained that the new Harvard computer will tackle production problems facing kitchen managers, such as cooking too much or not enough food.

Foraker said, for instance, that managers often must prepare recipes that serve 300 and adapt them to serve 1300. This calls for accurate forecasting of ingredients and cost.

Since the system was introduced, there has been a 6 to 10 percent budget savings in food costs at UCLA, Foraker added.

Ten terminals have made up a system identical to Harvard's at the University of California at San Diego since 1982. During that time, the cost of a meal has gone from $1.40 to $1.27 because of the efficiency of the computer, said Brian Klipter, a food services official there.

Klipter added that the computer paid for itself in 18 months rather than the expected two years. As far as food services is concerned, we are not going to become any more automated," Weissbecker said, adding. "Nothing is on the drawing board."

Christopher J. Georges contributed to the reporting of this article.