Automation of Supply Chain Management of Ration Shops

Conventional Public Distribution System (PDS) suffers from numerous problems owing to malpractices done by the ration store dealers such as channeling food grains to the open market in place of more profit, irregularity in opening and closing timing of ration shops, and false alarms of food grain deficit. The project aims to develop a mobile application for automating the Supply Chain Management (SCM) activity of ration shops. The proposed system involves tracking of movement of food grains at multiple stages, automation of ration shops, stock maintenance, and transparency of commodity sales. The system also aims to provide a convenient shopping experience to the beneficiaries by letting them view the current stock in the ration shops nearest to them and making payments for the required items just by sitting at home. This will eliminate the need to go to the ration shops multiple times to fetch all the needed items. The beneficiaries can book an appointment a priori, and proceed to actual purchase at the ration shops with a transaction id generated beforehand. The shopkeeper is also relieved of the cumbersome task of manually entering the sales details. This can contain the diversion of the food grains to non-beneficiaries. The stock balance and sales report are updated by fetching the purchase data of the beneficiaries. The overall process of food grain movement from public warehouses to the beneficiary is strictly monitored. Confirming transparency in the functioning of ration shops is critical to achieving transparency in the overall ration distribution system value chain.