Akshaya Patra - Not just a NGO but a Knowledge Enterprise too

In the recent past Akshaya Patra has been awarded for maintaining hygiene, cleanliness and employing food safety measures in implementing the mid-day meal programme. It has also been awarded for the various continual improvement measures like Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen employed in all its kitchens. During the 9th CII National Food Safety and Quality Summit on 2nd December, 2014 two Akshaya Patra kitchens namely Hubli kitchen and Vasanthapura kitchen received CII National Food Safety Awards 2014. The Hubli Kitchen received the second highest award of 'Certificate of Commendation for Significant Achievement in Food Safety' and the Vasanthapura kitchen received the highest award of 'Outstanding Performance in Food Safety'. 

During the 3rd Annual Convention and Competition of Lean Six Sigma, Akshaya Patra’s Gujarat team won the Platinum award for its case study on the theme 'Lean Six Sigma for Global Competitiveness'. It was the only NGO to take part in this competition and excelled ahead of about 40 case studies that were presented by leading manufacturing companies. Participating in the 5th National Convention on Operational Excellence by Kaizen Institute of India (KII) - Indizen 2014, Akshaya Patra won in the category of 'Continued Commitment to Operational Excellence' for its case study designed around a Six Sigma Project on Optimization of Cooking Gas Cost in its Surat kitchen.

Akshaya Patra has not only employed innovative technologies but it has also conducted knowledge sharing sessions for trainee IAS officers and also for cooks who are involved with the mid-day meal scheme across India. In the recently held Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Knowledge Summit 2015 in Bangalore on 19th and 20th March, the Foundation received the Asian MAKE (Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise) Award from the CII. This year’s summit theme centred around establishing pathway to a ‘Digital India’. The Asian MAKE is a platform to identify organisations that are founded as well as headquartered in Asia. It identifies organisations that create or increase stakeholder value by utilising either existing or new knowledge to improve their products or services. The panel of judges who were knowledge management and intellectual of Asian-based Fortune Global 500 adjudged the winners through a three level process and ranking them against the eight knowledge performance criteria of the MAKE framework.

Of the total 68 organisations nominated, only 20 organisations were entitled as winners of the 2014 Asian Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise. With Akshaya Patra being the only non-profit organisation, some of the other winning Indian organisations were Wipro Limited, Hindustan Unilever Limited, Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Limited. Read more about this award at Winner of Asian MAKE 2014 Award by CII.

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Akshaya Patra on World Health Day 2015

World Health Day is an initiative of World Health Organisation (WHO) to spread awareness and counter issues on various aspects related to health with a theme specific to the year. The rising threats posed by unsafe handling of food and the need for coordinated action throughout the food supply chain to mitigate foodborne diseases have made food safety the theme for World Health Day 2015. Under the slogan ‘From farm to plate, make food safe’ World Health Day 2015 will highlight the opportunities and challenges associated with food safety.

The World Health Day’s theme of food safety is closely related to The Akshaya Patra Foundation’s operational process. Akshaya Patra provides mid-day meal to more than 1.4 million children at Government schools. While preparing meal for so many children, Akshaya Patra follows a strict and mandatory kitchen process to maintain quality and hygiene of the prepared mid-day meals. Food Safety Management System is employed in all the kitchens to handle, prepare and deliver food to prevent food borne illness. 11 Centralised Kitchens are already ISO 22000:2005 certified and the remaining are in the process of certification. 

The entire food safety management of Akshaya Patra kitchen can be categorised as pre-production, production and post-production stages.  A high standard of personal hygiene is the first step towards food safety and prevention of food borne illnesses. Hence every Akshaya Patra kitchen staff follows a routine hygiene chart along with protective gears. Quality check is done during procurement of raw materials. There is a process to store and issue raw materials like FIFO (First In First Out) and FEFO (First Expiry First Out). Quality and safety is maintained during cooking like using vessels made of Stainless Steel of 304 grade checking and recording of Critical Control Points (CCPs) like cooking temperature at periodic intervals to avoid undercooking or overcooking of the meal. Batch wise Food Quality Check is done by Quality Officers in each kitchen. The cooked food is packed in steam sterilised vessels and transported through sterilised and customised transport vehicles to retain freshness of the cooked food. Methods like logistic charting and GPRS are gradually being adopted and implemented in the kitchens.

Collection of feedback from school and acting upon it, circulation of Dos and Don’ts to all schools on a periodical basis for creating awareness on food safety and hygiene while serving the mid-day meals, audits and reviews on a periodical manner along with adopting continual improvement methodologies like Kaizen, CI Projects and Six Sigma are part of post-production processes.

Akshaya Patra is glad to have been already serving millions of children with clean, hygienic and nutritious meal.

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