Contenido

1. Introduction.........................................................................................................................3
2. Identify the most important facts surrounding the case....................................................4
3. Identify the key issue or issues............................................................................................6
4. Specify alternative courses of actions.................................................................................7
5. Evaluate each course of action............................................................................................8
6. Recommend the best course of action................................................................................8
7. Bibliografía...........................................................................................................................9

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International Business
management

Tutorial work
Optative II

ERA OF QUALITY AT
THE AKSHAYA PATRA
FOUNDATION

Viviana Desiderio
Jordán Pombo
Iván Reinoso

2019-2020

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 ERA OF QUALITY AT THE AKSHAYA PATRA FOUNDATION TAPF
1. Introduction

The Akshaya Patra Foundation is an

organization in Bangalore, Capital of Indian States Karnataka that was created
to combat problems such as hunger and malnutrition by implementing the Half-
Day Meal Plan in the government schools. This midday meal consisted of Pulao
called dry ration (special food based on rice and vegetables) that was served on
Saturdays and Sambar (a spicy dish of lentils and vegetables from South India)
that was served during the week.

TAPF began with a story of compassion, when Swami Prabhupada, founder-

Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), saw
a group of children fighting with stray dogs for the remains of food, from this
incident is born Determine to feed the hungry children, his inspiration helped
create TAPF in 2000.

A group of entrepreneurs and founders of ISKCON moved by the plight of

children joined together to create TAPF and their vision was: "No child in India
will be deprived of education due to hunger."

During the process of creating this Foundation, there were several drawbacks
that included cooking time for meals, transportation, environment, among
others, due to the constant increase in consumers of this nutritious meal, for
them the most desired meal.

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From the beginning TAPF developed several high quality techniques both in its
products and in its services, among these techniques the Six Sigma and for this
TAPF recruited Muralidhar who was a Motorola Six Sigma black belt trained
and had a vast experience in the sector from manufacturing to lead a quality
cell, with this began a new era of Six Sigma in TAPF in which everything was
based on quality and consumer satisfaction. [ CITATION Sru15 \l 12298 ]

2. Identify the most important facts surrounding the case.

 On November 28, 2001, the Supreme Court of India approved an order

that consisted of supplying food to all primary schools of the government
in all states.
 Shortly after Swami Prabhupada saw in the street a group of children
fighting with dogs for food, the idea of creating TAPF was born in which
some corporate professionals, businessmen and missionaries of the
ISKCON (The International Society for Krishna Consciousness) to carry
out this idea.
 Thanks to this, TAPF carried out the half-day meal project to supply all
state schools in India-Bangalore, in which around 51% of the funding
was provided by grants and subsidies from the central and state
government, and This helped the foundation raise funds to operate in the
kitchens.
 TAPF at the beginning started with a centralized model and this caused
delays in deliveries schools that were further away.
 In the centralized kitchens there was capacity to cook between 50,000
and 150,000 meals a day, it was cooked in large quantities.
 Transportation was also difficult due to lack of road infrastructure in rural
areas, this led TAPF towards a decentralized model, in which kitchens
were implemented in more areas where it was almost impossible to
arrive.
 When Akshaya Patra expanded its operations, faced numerous quality
challenges. For example, the kitchens had different raw material

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 procurement mechanisms and these complexities created quality issues
owing to increasing variability in operations and management.
 By 2013, 11 out of the 20 kitchens of TAPF were ISO 22000 certified,
also TAPF received the Det Norske Veritas (DNV) certificate for food
safety.
 TAPF mandated procurement of the best quality of raw materials for all
kitchens and implemented a robust Supplier Quality Management
System (SQMS).
 Sanitization standards with a three-step process of cleaning vegetables
were introduced. Washing the vegetables in chlorinated water with
chlorine levels of 75 ppm ± 20 ppm was followed as a critical control
point (CCP) in preprocessing.
 Due to the vegetables were manually cut by the workers, they tended to
cut them into larger sizes and this caused the children to stop eating the
vegetables, in response to this TAPF introduced automated cutting
machines that cut the vegetables into small and equal sizes.
 The additional challenge was to customize the meal to the local
preferences and tastes of the children and an incident during the
inception years of TAPF was recalled, when soya chunks were
introduced in the meals in the VK Hill kitchen in an attempt to improve
the nutrition value of the meal and discovered that most of the children
had refused to eat the dish.
 TAPF finally completed the circle of quality by connecting the two ends of
the supply chain through a feedback mechanism that traced back the
problems faced by the consumers to TAPF’s internal processes and all
the way to the suppliers.
 In 2012, as a part of its strategic decision-making, TAPF recruited
Muralidhar to head a Quality cell and with this started a new era of lean
Six Sigma at TAPF.
 Since Akshaya Patra was growing in quality, more schools were added
to the program and this resulted in more challenges, cooking times
increased in proportion to the batches that were cooked and this meant

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 that cooking should start much earlier, but there was a limit Superior for
the cooking time to consumption, it could not exceed normally 6 hours.
This focused directly on the cooking cycle.
 The cooking cycle time therefore was selected as one of the critical-to-
quality (CTQ) measures and a Six Sigma project was initiated to improve
this measure at VK Hill kitchen.
 With the help of the learning from the three-day Green Belt training
program that the team had undergone, it was decided to use the DMAIC
methodology to carry out this project. For most of the team members
(other than Jaya Kumar – Manager CI Programs) this was their first Six
Sigma project.

3. Identify the key issue or issues.

The cooking cycle time causes delays in the delivery of food to schools and if
they do not arrive on time their temperature is not the desired one, they were
breaking the two key indicators (KPI) that TAPF was using which are:

1. Food temperature at delivery

2. Number of deliveries made before 12 noon every day.

Process Environment Men

Handly cut Low education
Road
vegetables levels
infrastructure

Food packaging Incorrect

Weather change
Comunication

Usage of cold water Accidents Low motivation

Cycle cooking
time
Maintenance Few
Variability vehicles
Small
cauldron
Quality Uncleaned
Vehicles
Poor facilities

Suppliers 6
 Machinery Transportation

4. Specify alternative courses of actions.

According to the Pareto analysis showed at the “exhibit 9” we can see that the
non-availability of vessels it’s an important key that delay the delivery of the
product but the data collection did not show any incidents or any improvement
in the cooking average period if we have a storage of vessels, so we turn our
attention at the another high percentage situation that delays the cooking period
in this case it is the using of cold water if we pay attention in the exhibit 9 the
usage of cold water affects in a 60% the delay of cooking, so what about if we
already have a system that provide us of hot or boiled water so we can take
advantage of that minutes in our favor and accelerate the cooking process.

Also another inconvenient according to one of the kitchen members is that they
gained more time filling up the hole vessel that only half of the vessels so we
can take the idea to reduce the storage of vessels and start to filling up the hole
vessel and in that way we give more of our product to the consumers and we
reduce the use of the vessels.

And finally to reach our main goal we can do one important thing that we are
pretty sure it’s going to help us to save a lot of time in the cooking period and
it’s going to be having only one kind of preparation it means that we are going to
eliminate one of the two types of cooking that we have and we are only going to
have in sambar the vegetables salt and tomatoes, that way we are saving a
total amount of 45 minutes adding to the 7 minutes that we are saving
implementing the system of boiling water, we are near to our main goal of
saving one hour in pour cooking process and saving money in the different
products that we add in the cooking type B.

18 120%
92% 95%
80% 85% 98%100% 100%
14 89%
68%
12 74% 7 80%
56%
48 %62% 60%
8 39 %
6 30% 40%
 1 % 20%
2
0 0%

Non availability of vessels

less area in kitchen

Menu complexity
Less capasity of sambar
Usage of cold water
Less man power

Poor quality of raw material

Delay in packing
Quality of toor dal

Poor steam quality

less automation
Water unavailability
Complex packing

Design of cauldron

Guest visiting during

5. Evaluate each course of action.
Taking in mind the last section we can see that the product doesn’t has any
incident or improvement in the cooking time. To correct this type of data. The
product needs to have a more specific manual that can tell you what method is
going to delay the cooking time. The system that can provide hot water is going
to help the company in an operational standpoint reducing cooking time can
help having better time for deliveries. With only one type of preparation means
that the kitchen will manage the cooking time better and will give a more
accurate cooking time expectation. Specializing in one type of preparation will
help the operational work reducing time and giving a better service.

6. Recommend the best course of action

We decide to choose this course of action because talking about food business
means that the delivery time needs to be as quick as possible. Food need to
arrive hot and in its best moment. Reducing time in the cooking process is the
best option to have better quality in the food industry if we are talking about
delivery. Talking about specializing in one type of cooking procedure can help
with the quality of the same food, specializing in one preparation means that the
employees will dominate this ability and that means that with a little more time in
that place the food will go out very good and very fast.

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 7. Bibliografía
Srujana H M, H. S. (2015). Era of quality at the akshaya Patra Foundation. Bangalore - India :
Indian Institute of Management Bangalore . Obtenido de
http://www23.ucsg.edu.ec/presencial/81321/pluginfile.php/90959/mod_resource/co
ntent/1/AKSHAYA%20PATRA.pdf