How can wastage be prevented at Huskur gate fruit market ?

 The other day we went with MBA sem 3 students to the Huskur gate fruit market, near Electronic city, in Bangalore, the second largest in India and the largest mango market in Asia. 

 

The most striking aspect of the market was the quantity of fruits that come to the market daily from different parts of South India. The two most important stakeholders in the fruit supply chain are the growers or farmers coming from different parts of the country bringing their produce, the middle men who buy from the farmers, mandi merchants and finally the customers or the buyers who buy from the traders or middle men at a profit. 

The middle men serves the purpose of acting as a buffer when the farmer does not find a customer straight away and has to leave the place entrusting his produce with a middle man, often selling to him at a fair price. Often we find the middle men control the market to their benefit.

The most striking aspect of the market when I asked the students was that it was not properly maintained, was very dirty, bad odour, wastes were being scattered with no proper treatment visible and the haphazard movement of fruits and vehicles in the compound. 

The market opens at 5 AM and is operational till 10 AM by when most of the deals are sealed. No sign of control or authority was visible at the site. It was a disorderly wayward setup.

 

We immediately got on the job, what and how can we rectify the situation ? In the class discussion we had this morning, we identified that the fruit market is a part of the distribution supply chain of fruits. The main stakeholders in it are the farmers who bring the produce for sale, the customers who buy the produce and the farmers who grow them. Both farmers and customers are geographically spaced.

 

We deliberated in the class how we could use the Ishikawa Cause and effect diagram to identify the main causes for the sad state of affairs at the market. Among the most important of the six factors of men. materials, machines, methods, measurements and mother nature, we observed it was methods that had the maximum impact on the poor state of affairs at the market. 

Not having a proper Standard Operating Procedure on how to handle and dispose wastes, the poor coordination between the BBMP officers and the farmers and traders, poor data collection on sales and wastes, the poor post-harvesting strategies adopted by the farmers to ensure long life of the produce, contributed to the mess facing the market.

The seasonal nature of the fruits arriving at the market, the perishable nature and hence different storage and processing strategies for the different fruits contributes to the complexity in the supply chain processes. As Peter Drucker says, if you cant measure it, you cannot improve it. So the first and most important step in identifying and reducing waste, is to measure the waste. It can be an arduous task to do so. But let it be a start. 

We wish to present this to the ASB management to possibly pursue with Toyota during the MOU signing process as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility, to ensure better organised market and waste processing strategies ensuring better profits to farmers, middle men and customers in the long run. 

Data is something we find in very short supply and it is not captured anywhere, except in the daily trade and the tax records of the day. The data regarding the types of fruits, the wastes generated daily, the reasons for the wastes could throw great insight into how agri supply chains can be optimised to the future.