Identify Improvement Opportunities in Desiccated Coconut Manufacturing Sector in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Sri Lanka is now in a position to accelerate its economic growth in all sectors. Main agricultural products export sector plays a vital role in this scenario. Desiccated coconut is one of the most important economic products which can contribute considerably for the same. Even though the * government is raising funds in deferent areas for improvement of coconut industry in Sri Lanka so far DC mill owners have not been able to over come their common manufacturing related issues since last decade. The biggest problem at the moment desiccated coconut manufacturers face is its cost of production, depleting availability of raw coconut and lack of skill labour. This study mainly focuses to address those issues. But unfortunately unavailability of coconut will not be able to resolve over night. Since that how efficiently use the available resources is vital and discussed herewith. * Ultimate objective is to prepare a generic guideline to desiccated coconut manufacturing sector in Sri Lanka which highlighting present inefficiencies and improvement opportunities need to be carried out to overcome their manufacturing and energy utilization related issues to make their business profitable. Using different tools and techniques in process improvement and waste reduction in • manufacturing processes is vital in the world. "Cleaner production" is one of such tool can be applied in any area such as manufacturing, service providing etc mainly highlighting environmental concerns and waste elimination. Therefore "Cleaner Production" methodology has been used for evaluation of desiccated coconut manufacturing process and identifies the process inefficiencies. For investigation of DC manufacturing process, Katana DC mill is selected as a modernized and medium scale DC plant which represents the majority of the desiccated mills in Sri Lanka. At the moment we have only 53 DC mills and 90% of those are in medium scale. Unless few machineries or equipment used, the production process and the technology available is identical in all DC mills in Sri Lanka. Cleaner production assessment tools and techniques have been used for execution of the investigation of DC production process.