The fact that Akshaya Patra’s Hubballi
kitchen featured in the NGCs Mega Kitchens of India alongside the likes of TajSATS
Air Catering Ltd., speaks volumes about its magnanimity. This particular kitchen
has the capacity to prepare meals for over 200,000 children in approximately
four hours. And this, mind you, is just one of the 22 centralised kitchens the
Foundation operates across India … feeding over 1.5 million children as a part
of the Mid-day Meal Programme in 11,360 schools every single day.
If Akshaya Patra has been able to pull off
this task, it’s largely because of the tremendous efforts put in by each of the
stakeholder involved, right from its employees to donors. Also playing a
crucial role in its success is the ability to adapt and evolve. The
organisation has adopted kaizen wherever possible with the aim to achieve
overall excellence.
What is Kaizen
All About?
In Japanese, kaizen means improvement or simply put, changing for better. The
concept has become popular world over as one of the key attributes of an
organisation’s long-term strategy. It is based on the belief that several small
changes—over the course of time—help in achieving big results.
Akshaya Patra’s
Kaizen Initiatives
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| Before Kaizen Technique |
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| After kaizen Technique |
Kaizen techniques have been put to use in
various sectors, including government, health care, banking, and even NGOs. In
fact, at Akshaya Patra, kaizens are adopted at various levels of operations to
facilitate efficient use of resources, make the task cost effective, save time,
and produce better results. When you serve mid-day
meals
to over 1.5 million children, it goes without saying that it’s imperative that
your kitchen technology is at its
efficient best—kaizens help Akshaya Patra pull off the task.
As a part of kaizen initiative, Akshaya
Patra's Hubballi and Vasanthapura kitchens have started cooking rice with
starch instead of draining it. In what can be considered an apt example of
kaizen for effective use of resources, this helps these kitchens save around
11,000 and 6,000 litres of water respectively.
As for saving time, the preparation time
for a single batch of rice which was 20 – 22 minutes before this kaizen method was
implemented, has now been reduced to 15 – 19 minutes. Thus, 30 – 40 minutes are
saved every day. Now half an hour may not seem like a lot of time, but consider
the fact that mid-day meals are prepared in four hours of so, and you realise
how important these 30 – 40 minutes are.
It’s also worth noting that the retention
of starch adds to the nutritional content of the rice.
Kaizen initiatives have helped Akshaya
Patra make the most of resources at its disposal elsewhere as well. In Guwahati,
Assam, for instance, route analysis has helped in reducing the distance covered
and diesel consumed by delivery vans, thus helping in saving time and making
efficient use of resources.
Simple things like a design modification
as a part of which the flat bottom of a silo at Surat kitchen was turned into
conical bottom, replacing plastic wipers with durable wipers made of stainless
steel, or—for that matter—introducing cauldrons with safety locks has helped Akshaya
Patra kitchens make the task of preparing and delivering mid-day meals much more
effective.
Like we mentioned earlier, kaizen is all
about tweaking several small things to bring about a big overall change and Akshaya
Patra has several examples of such initiatives. Not surprising then, is the
fact that the Foundation has scaled up to feed over 1.5 million children across
ten states since its inception and plans to reach 5 million children by 2020.
Now,
that’s a goal that won’t be possible with kaizens alone. Other stakeholders
will also have to pitch in. Regardless of whether you are an individual or
organisation, one simple way to help is to donate to the NGO.
In doing so, you will ensure that Akshaya Patra reaches more children …
nurtures more dreams.
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