Value Stream Mapping : A Tool for Indian Agri-Food Supply Chain

India is leading producer of wheat and rice but it is a common phenomenon in India, 60% of children in India are underweight and malnourished and as a total 21% of the total population is malnourished. According to World Bank, productivity losses in India due to different kind of deficiencies are equal to almost 3% of GDP. Growth in agricultural productivity has increased from 40% to 500% in the past 50 years; still the availability of food remains a problem for many households in India. Poor transportation system, Lack of storage facilities etc are said to be the main reasons why food distribution in India is so poor. Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) undertook a survey find out bottlenecks in Indian Food Industry; they found that 44.25% of respondents quoted inadequate Infrastructural Facilities as a main barrier. Infrastructure related facilities which comprises of Logistics network and Warehousing. The Food Corporation of India plans to rework its supply-chain management. The nodal agency that procures and distributes food grains across the country and annually buys 250 lakh tonnes of wheat and 300 lakh tonnes of rice. This paper presented a systematic approach for determining the waste in the agri-food supply chains. The approach is based on lean thinking techniques so as to identify sources of waste in the agri-food supply chain. We proposed the Value-Stream Mapping (VSM) tool for determining waste. Authors explore that lean thinking techniques can be effective tools for identifying the factors that influence the agri-food supply chain and also for decreasing the waste