“Centralization and Decentralization” are two sides of a supply chain coin, which influences the decision making of a SC manager. Centralization is a location strategy where supply chain majorly performs being located at one central location; on the other hand decentralization is where the supply chain operations are dispersed across various locations. These uniquely attributed models have their own style of creating credibility in the value chain; that eventually brings in more challenge for the SC manager while choosing one over the other. And today, India’s Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) will be our learning companion that will help us to understand the centralization and decentralization model better.
India, a fruitful young country with 39% of its population being below 18 till date fights against one giant monster called poverty. As a country India cannot afford to lose these young inquisitive minds or the nation’s future promise to the threat of starvation and undernourishment. The “Mid Day Meal Scheme” introduced around the year 1960’s at Tamil Nadu brought in a new ray of hope in the improvement of school children’s nourishment as well as in the increased enrollment of children in the school. Following Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Gujarat were the other two states who also officially initiated the scheme around 1980’s. Currently across India more than 12 states have successfully implemented the MDMS.
The main operational objective of the Mid Day Meal Scheme is to prepare and deliver the tasty nutritious food to all the Government school children till upper primary class. The model which was followed first and foremost was the “decentralized kitchen” where every school had a kitchen setup either within or at a closer proximity and a monitoring person takes care of raising the orders, purchasing the orders and distributing the orders to the culinary staffs. The kitchen should make sure that meal is ready before the clock strikes 12pm for the children to come have their lunch. Having said about the simplicity, the decentralized model suffered from major disadvantages like;
- Lack of standardized food quality
- Complexity in monitoring the MDMS as the numbers of silos were high
- More operating costs
- Lack of appropriate infrastructure at schools to set up the kitchen (2004 Kumbakonam kitchen fire accident is one unforgettable tragedy which took away lives of 94 children due to poor infrastructure which wasn't suitable for possessing a kitchen the school had)
State government saw “centralized kitchen” as a potential solution for the challenges of decentralized model. And this centralized kitchen is usually a public-private partnership where NGOs worked with the government to prepare and distribute the meal; relatively these NGOs rely on governments, foundations, corporations and individual donors to run their operational expenses. These centralized kitchens are built to handle larger capability with automated and semi automated machinery set up. Along with capacity the centralized model also aimed at;
- Standardized process of food making which ensure right quality of nourishments
- Better hygienic practices
- Better data management system by reducing the number of silos
- Achieving the economies of scale
- Maintaining a standardized infrastructure with all precautionary safety measures
Value chain of centralized kitchen model
Unlike the decentralized kitchen in centralized kitchen the necessity of transportation makes it more suitable for urban areas with more densely located schools. The closer the schools lay the better the timeliness and farther schools lay greater the response time will be.
Across India there are various NGOs who act as MDMS stakeholder in food preparation and distribution unit and some of them are; Akshaya Patra Foundation, Ekta Shakti Foundation, Naandi Foundation, and Jay Gee Humanitarian Society & People's Forum. Though MDMS scheme have been partially introduced before independence it has taken it's complete structure after independence and since then the scheme's contribution towards chasing the classroom hunger is massive. Passing the ups and downs today for some parents it is the motivation to send their children to school. #Happy_Learning 8
-Roobaswathiny A
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