Attachments
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Government of Odisha (GoO) has made remarkable progress and enhancements to the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) of the state since the adoption of the National Food Security Act’ 2013 (NFSA) and the implementation of End-to-End (EtE) computerisation of the TPDS. As part of this process, the procurement and distribution systems for TPDS have been digitised and automated. In an endeavour to make these systems even more efficient, accountable and transparent at the request of GoO, World Food Programme (WFP) undertook an assessment of the entire procurement and distribution operations as well as the deployed software systems i.e. Paddy Procurement Automation System (P-PAS) and the Supply Chain Management System (SCMS), during April, 2017.
The core recommendations of WFP’s assessment included a comprehensive business process review of the SCMS and P-PAS system to enhance and integrate the two systems. The report also suggested stringent measures to improve quality control, introduction of requisite infrastructure at PACS, introduction and adherence to Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) at mills and improvement in warehouse management at Rice Receiving Centres (RRC). Lastly, a study to access the overall supply chain including farmers, PACS, mills, warehouses and FPS from an operational research perspective to optimise the entire network was also recommended.
In line with these recommendations, a WFP mission comprising of supply chain and operational research experts completed field assessments and stakeholder consultations in December 2017. The mission’s objectives were to identify optimisation opportunities, understand operational processes, data availability and further suggest a potential roadmap for implementation of the optimised supply chain setup.
The December mission observed that the existing network planning and tagging was based on proximity, administrative boundaries, and other ‘greedy algorithms2 , which resulted in inefficiencies in the overall supply chain and underutilisation of resources. The mission further suggested that an incremental approach for supply chain optimisation be adopted, within which initially a proof of concept (PoC) to demonstrate savings potential of optimisation should be completed. Based on the outputs of the PoC, the state may further choose to either implement the findings in one district to realise actual savings or develop a structural solution which can be implemented in the entire state.
Dhenkanal district was chosen for the initial PoC since GoO had already completed data collection including geocodes for the entire TPDS supply chain of Dhenkanal. Dhenkanal district, which is located in the central part of Odisha has 9.28 lakh TPDS beneficiaries with a requirement of 45000 quintals of rice and 8000 quintals of wheat monthly. The beneficiaries are served by 565 Fair Price Shops (FPS). The district also has 10 RRCs, 1 Food Corporation of India (FCI) warehouse to store the food grains (rice and wheat) and 12 mills that mill the paddy procured at 80 PACS in the district.
To complete the PoC, WFP prioritised, structured and analysed data as well as applied the optimisation algorithm to execute various scenarios within the given constraints. The figure below describes the methodology used for arriving at the outputs.