Kitchen Management System

Software	Object oriented language with good GUI tools
Covers	Databases, interface development
Skills Required	Programming, databases, ideally interest in food or charity work
Challenge	Conceptual ??? Technical ?? Programming ???

Brief Description

The aim of the project is to produce a stock control system to track the food and other resources possessed by a kitchen, and project future use and needs and provide prods and warnings when resupply is needed.

The target clients for a system like this will be schools or hospitals, or temples or charities or quangos running kitchens for poor people or refugees or other middling to large numbers of people. (A system for private individuals at home is unlikely to meet a real need. If we had time to use a software system to manage our fridge, we wouldn't need a software system to manage our fridge. Can you think of a niche user group would would actually benefit from kitchen management software?) A system for a charity would be a much more interesting project than a system for an organization like a school that can accurately forecast demand for food and go out and order food from their regular suppliers on a regular basis. Organizations that rely on donations would be very concerned about how to adapt the choice of food they cook to the supplies they get given, and how to plan round the unreliability of freebies. They might also need computer support for coping with variations of need, when some foods can be stored a relatively long time and cooked quickly, while other items might have a much longer preparation time so need commitment further ahead, or need to be consumed quickly, or be reaching the end of acceptable usability.

Variants

A good feature would be to track the people available to work in the kitchen at particular times, and identify when extra staff will be needed.

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