Akshaya Patra: Feeding India's School Children: Group 7

BY - Group 7
Akshaya Patra: Feeding India’s

school children
1. What are the challenges faced by the Akshaya Patra Foundation (TAPF) in its pursuits of
Mission?
Akshaya Patra used Dual Pronged Distribution Strategy, Centralised kitchen to operate in
urban areas and used decentralised kitchen to operate in rural areas.
Akshaya Patra Received complaints related to time of delivery, quality of food and taste of
food. They used feedback from schools to improve their operations.
Harsh working condition in some of the remote rural kitchen, Akshaya Patra had to design
different process layout for the individual kitchen considering the local weather condition,
taste buds, supply availability and manpower availability.
Constant expansion in the operations demands Akshaya Patra to increase their production
capacity. Capacity planning becomes complicated as they have to account for future
expansion plans as well.
Akshaya Patra received subsidy from government, which led to poor quality of rice, since
price was set by weight, the middleman often adding foreign materials to increase tonnage.
Amount of time took to move from one school to the next was higher and Akshaya Patra
tracked this information to increase their operation. No back up vehicles were available in
case of emergencies in delivery.
They employed from self-help groups based on local availability of manpower, their
employees were uneducated unemployed people they had to go through complete training
before joining the operations of AP.
During uncertain whether condition they were not able to run their operations efficiently.
2. What are the options that Akshaya Patra is pursuing to address these challenges?
The metrics for success at Akshaya Patra was in terms of number of children fed, increase in
school enrolment and attendance, improvement of academic performance and health
following which they took the following necessary steps:
1. India’s population of people living in the rural areas and poverty were concentrated
largely in the regions which were often very challenging to serve for addressing which
they employed a decentralised approach to distribute food in rural areas with
localised kitchen.
2. To cater to discrepancies in the food quality, taste of food insufficient quantity of
irregular time of delivery they appointed distributor supervisors would take feedback
from schools hence leading to recalibration of vegetable cutting tool to ensure
smaller sized chewable vegetable pieces, sour tasting curd was traced back to poor
supply and hence a they changed the supplier to remedy the problem, improvements
in kitchen design and operation to enable smooth operations like in the case of over
heating kitchen in Jaipur facility and lining the vessel with paper to keep the chapatis
moist.
3. Middlemen often added foreign objects to increase tonnage to tackle which they
used destoning machines.
4. Self-help groups of women hired to cook the food were often had no education or
work experience so they provided basic training in cooking, nutrition and hygiene.
Some of the women cooks would bath once in 6 days and ignored the basic hygiene
standards to enforce which, they proposed that the first bite of the food should be
offered to god following which the women took their own initiative to wash in order
to bless the food.
5. Children fed by Akshaya Patra suffered worm infestation and were vitamin A deficient
sighting which they administered children with de-worming medicines and micro
nutrient capsules furthering basic dental and eye care.
3. What changes are required in its operating model to achieve its mission?
Increase the number of decentralise Kitchens in rural areas, considering high investment
required to set up it will be cost effective in long run.
Increase the usage of local suppliers for procuring raw materials, directly buying from farmers
in case of rural area will increase efficiency and improve the quality.
Explore alternate channel for procuring to maintain low cost and quality
Maintain a quality control system for the procurement as well as the deliverables.
Centralised operation can achieve economies of scale in urban areas which makes this
operation effective and only needs improvement in terms of quality and timely deliver.
They can reduce the time required at each station by reducing the time take to fill the long
documentation form and instead using an electronic tablet which will reduce the time taken
to record redundant data(data like school name, address, date, phone number etc while
using online authentication of finger print of the teacher in charge )
Teachers can update the number of students present right in the morning and morning data
can be used for demand estimation than previous day’s data

Akshaya Patra: Feeding India's School Children: Group 7

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Akshaya Patra: Feeding India's School Children: Group 7

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

BY - Group 7

Akshaya Patra: Feeding India’s

You might also like