ABSTRACT
Abstract Governments and private companies have increased efforts to identify effective actions for improving energy efficiency in manufacturing processes. The objective of this work is to improve the decision-making process by increasing the quality of information related to energy indicators in the food industry. This research involves developing a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify energy efficiency indicators in the food industry, which serve as inputs for a sectoral evaluation based on multicriteria techniques. The SLR identified six criteria evaluated by food industry experts, which form the proposed basis for evaluating the performance of related sectors. These criteria are: benchmarks, key performance indicators, framework, monitoring, ISO 50001, and information communication technologies (ICTs) in sectoral evaluations. The criteria were evaluated by experts using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which prioritizes the most important food industry issues using an evaluation scale. Weights were attributed to each issue and positioned according to the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE) to evaluate each sector by the identified criteria. The evaluated criteria are applicable to the three sectors surveyed, with emphasis on the beverage sector. Among the evaluated criteria, ICTs were highlighted by Industry 4.0 as a concern for the food sector.