M-Foods a cell phone based system is helping a scheme of Andhra government in timely delivery of foods to the needies of the state. Supplementary nutrition programme or SNP is a scheme in Andhra which is feeding almost 3.5 million people of the state, who include children under six lactating mother and pregnant ladies. The scheme is implemented using 9100 day care centres throughout the state.
But for a very long time this scheme was beset due to a lot of problems in communication, processing, supply chain issues and lack of effective management. In the year 2000 M-Foods was conceived by Andhra Pradesh foods to bridge the gap in the scheme.
M-Foods make use of SMS to solve all the problems during the process of delivery of the food. Depending upon the number of beneficiary the workers in the day care centre place their order in the form of the SMS. The supply schedule is accordingly adjusted and updated by the AP-Foods; the information is also passed to the transport drivers and the people in the warehouse who prepare food. Once when the delivery is done the workers in the day care centre are acknowledged by an SMS. There is a centralized system that keeps track of the entire system.
Earlier the same process was done using hard copies like fax or posts for placing orders and phone calls were used to report any problem, but it was very inefficient and caused a lot of hindrances in delivering the foods. The National Informatics Centre (NIC) of the Union government’s department of information technology has built the technology for the M-Foods project free of cost. NIC used free and open source technologies and an in-house mobile gateway was established to facilitate mobile communication. CERT-In has done the third-party security audit for the project.
The state is spending 900 cores as a part of integrated child development scheme to avoid malnutrition in kids. In the next phase, the state government wants to link the M-Foods project with daily attendance reports at day care center. It is also trying to use identification systems to ensure that food is reaching its intended beneficiaries, and is even planning to give cell phones and laptops to workers to make the process simpler.
But for a very long time this scheme was beset due to a lot of problems in communication, processing, supply chain issues and lack of effective management. In the year 2000 M-Foods was conceived by Andhra Pradesh foods to bridge the gap in the scheme.
M-Foods make use of SMS to solve all the problems during the process of delivery of the food. Depending upon the number of beneficiary the workers in the day care centre place their order in the form of the SMS. The supply schedule is accordingly adjusted and updated by the AP-Foods; the information is also passed to the transport drivers and the people in the warehouse who prepare food. Once when the delivery is done the workers in the day care centre are acknowledged by an SMS. There is a centralized system that keeps track of the entire system.
Earlier the same process was done using hard copies like fax or posts for placing orders and phone calls were used to report any problem, but it was very inefficient and caused a lot of hindrances in delivering the foods. The National Informatics Centre (NIC) of the Union government’s department of information technology has built the technology for the M-Foods project free of cost. NIC used free and open source technologies and an in-house mobile gateway was established to facilitate mobile communication. CERT-In has done the third-party security audit for the project.
The state is spending 900 cores as a part of integrated child development scheme to avoid malnutrition in kids. In the next phase, the state government wants to link the M-Foods project with daily attendance reports at day care center. It is also trying to use identification systems to ensure that food is reaching its intended beneficiaries, and is even planning to give cell phones and laptops to workers to make the process simpler.