Safe Harvest is actively engaging with farmers across India, a majority of who are women, and brings high quality pesticide-free food directly from farmers to consumers. Women on Wings and Safe Harvest collaborate on their joint goal of increasing jobs and raising the income of rural women.
Growing sales and women workforce
Recently, a team comprising Germaine van Teefelen, a Dutch logistics and supply chain management expert, and Shashank Teotia, Senior Business Consultant at Women on Wings, visited Safe Harvest’s facility in Hyderabad and conducted a workshop for 2 days. Germaine shares: “After a delay due to heavy rains in Delhi, we reached the production unit much later than planned. But I took off my shoes and enjoyed the quick introduction through the production and packing unit in the morning. It was my first assignment for Women on Wings, but I felt I was in the right spot. Safe Harvest’s sales is growing and so is the number of women employed.”
Data improves planning
Continues Germaine: “I found the conversations and discussions with the Safe Harvest team very stimulating. I heard their issues, discussed possible solutions and jointly charted out action plans. The team calculated the capacity needed for the coming season. Based on this input, I advised the procurement team to align themselves more with the Sales plan. Gathering data daily to make sure that the planned capacity is in line with the actual output, was one of the action plans defined.”
Standardization processes
Further, to facilitate Safe Harvest in its growth, Germaine introduced the Japanese 5S methodology. 5S uses a list of five words (Sort, Set In order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain) and describes how to organize a work-space for efficiency and effectiveness by identifying and storing the items used, maintaining the area and items, and sustaining the new order.Together the Women on Wings experts and Safe Harvest team generated a fixed agenda for the daily production meeting and elaborated on safety stocks, bottlenecks, wastage and looked for the right spot to put up an extra packaging line.
