Food Bank Inventory Tracking Rachel Barnecut Lucia Huntting Jeremy Lenz Ashley Riel Kelly Schalow Christiana Wu Beth Kolko Gaetano Borriello HCDE 419/CSE 490 Winter 2011
Introduction During hard economic times, the services provided by food banks have been in higher demand now than in previous years. Food banks provide an essential social service to community members in need by offering emergency hunger relief to those that cannot afford necessary commodities. Seattle food banks rely heavily on volunteers and donations to run efficiently. A significant portion of donations come from large organizations including: Northwest Harvest, Food Lifeline, and the City of Seattle. Food banks are required to report back to these organizations on a monthly basis, disclosing information regarding donations and client demographics. Through conducting fieldwork we have determined that this process can be streamlined by incorporating technology; in this case, an Android application would be most appropriate when entering collection information. This paper includes an explanation of our project s purpose, an overview of our literature review and fieldwork, an analysis of the potential social impacts, an explanation of our prototype, and a conclusion. Purpose The purpose of this project is to help food banks improve organization and reduce the amount of work required to track inventory. The current scope of this project focuses on the incoming shipments from the large donating organizations, which includes Northwest Harvest, Food Lifeline, the City of Seattle, and other government agencies. For this project, we are focusing specifically on the Greenwood Food Bank in Seattle, WA. The process of receiving donations from larger organizations is more standardized across multiple food banks than that of receiving from individuals or collecting through food drives. Orders are placed with the organizations based on what food banks need, then orders
are shipped to the facility. Every month, the large organizations require food banks to file a monthly report. These reports include information about donations made by a particular organization, such as what food is received from the organization, how much of it is used, how much of the total inventory it accounts for, the estimated worth of the inventory, and general demographic information on the clients served. A system that improves the collection and inventory processes for large organizations is one that could potentially be implemented at many food banks, because it addresses a required task. The initial focus on streamlining the inventory process for donations from large organizations will serve as a platform for the future of this project, addressing collection from other types of donors. Intended audience Our intended audience includes those working at food banks, most notably those involved with keeping inventory. This includes managers, drivers, and head volunteers. We are trying to streamline inventory data entry and found it best to focus on the people already
involved with monitoring and entering inventory data. This prevents the need to purchase more devices and train other volunteers about working with the system. By limiting the audience we also reduce the risk of duplicate data entry. Resource constraints Based on research and fieldwork that are discussed in the following, we were able to identify our main constraints, which included limited funding and also inventory processes which were not standardized across the multiple food banks. Since submitting reports to donating organizations was a commonality across food banks, we decided it would be best to propose a handheld system capable of updating a database with information about the incoming products from these organizations. This would cut down on paperwork and the time spent on data entry. Overview of literature review Reviewing literature related to food bank processes and inventory tracking provided us with a knowledge base for the project. The literature review was helpful for identifying the goals of food banks, as well as providing information on current projects aimed to standardize the inventory process. The purpose of food banks and the current efforts to standardize the inventory process are discussed below regarding the information we have discovered form our research efforts. Purpose of food banks Whether examining a food bank in the greater Seattle area or across the country, one food bank s mission is the same as the next: distribute food to those in need. With the present
state of the economy, there has been an increase in demand for the services provided by food banks in recent years. With the increase in demand, there has also been a shift in client demographics. On average, food banks provide emergency relief food to households ranging in size from one to three people. The major ethnicities recorded include Caucasian, African- American, Asian, and Hispanic (Mabli). Current efforts to standardize the inventory processes In recent years, there have been movements to standardize inventory tracking in food banks, mostly through creating and updating software. Software development occurs after an analysis of the collection and distribution processes. Presently there are notable inventory tracking technologies used in warehouses. These include: barcodes/scanning, voice picking, and newly incorporated radio frequency identification (RFID) (Cakici, Jones, Gerrard, Kribach). It is important to keep these technologies in mind, although they are implemented on a larger scale compared to the size of local food banks. Some notable work has been done to standardize the inventory process on the smaller scale. Students at the Worcester Polytechnic Clinic created a prototype that automates repetitive tasks, as well as manages pantry information and client data. An ongoing project is Feeding America s Project Athena. Its mission is to update and standardize software in food banks. It aims to do so by developing a desktop application that would convert all documents to PDF. By standardizing everything into PDF and upgrading to Windows 7, the project s hope is that sharing, editing, and documenting information would be more efficient than current processes (Tibbits, Feeding America ).
Overview of fieldwork Our fieldwork focused primarily on the Greenwood Food Bank (GFB) with our primary contact being Sydney Pawlak. We visited the GFB on three occasions: once to participate in volunteer orientation, tour the facility, and discuss the basic inventory methods with Sydney; a second time to speak with Patty Leach, the manager of GFB, about the specifics of the inventory process and its problems; and a third time to perform user testing of two prototypes we created to emulate an Android device interface. Group members also visited other food banks and donors to collect more information. Aside from the GFB we also visited the University District Food Bank (UDFB), the West Seattle Food Bank (WSFB), and the Downtown Bellevue Safeway. Through our fieldwork we made several observations and changed our approach to the project. Patty Leach informed us that all of the food banks work differently. She further said that of the different sites she has worked at, GFB was the only food bank that had a system in place to track inventory. After visiting the WSFB and the UDFB, it was confirmed that there was not an accurate inventory tracking system in place. An important take away from these food banks were that because food was received and distributed in a short amount of time, using a barcode and scanning system to check items in and out of the system would be too disruptive to the work flow. Although the inventory process varies among food banks, there are some commonalities. These food banks are all nonprofit organizations and rely heavily on volunteers. The most notable observation from our fieldwork was that all food banks are required to submit monthly reports to several organizations that donated food and money. These
organizations include Food Lifeline, Northwest Harvest, the City of Seattle and other government organizations. To complete these reports, food banks need to track specific information about the donations received from these organizations including weight, how much food is received, what kind of food is received, what percentage of the total inventory their donation comprises, and the estimated worth of the donation. Potential social impacts There are implications when integrating new tasks into an existing system. This project aims to streamline the collection process when receiving from larger organizations by replacing the current paper- based system with one that is integrated with technology. By storing shipment information in the proper database tables, managers will be able to generate the monthly reports required by the larger donating organizations in an easier fashion. Through introducing a new system, this project hopes to impact food banks in a positive manner on many levels. Food bank managers will save time and effort when creating monthly reports because the information they need would be easily accessible. Therefore, they will be able to allocate more time to supervising volunteers, helping with the collection and distribution, and maintaining bonds with members of the community. From an operations standpoint, this project could see a reduction in the amount of paper used by food banks. Such a system may influence the type of receipts received with incoming shipments; in the future, there may be a transition from paper to digital, which could be entered into the inventory system automatically. Unfortunately, a potential downside to implementing this project is cost. In order for food banks to make use of a system like this, they would need to obtain either smart phones or
tablets that are compatible with the database. It cannot be assumed that food banks have access to these technologies, as they are nonprofit organizations and operate based on donations. Prototype Screenshot of preferred checklist style. The flow of the prototype. As a group we created several different paper prototypes and looked for the similar design decisions across them. Although we are currently focusing on the GFB, we are designing for future implementation at multiple food banks. For this reason, we decided to focus on the required tracking and reporting of donations from larger organizations. We found that we had
consistencies in our designs about allowing users to input data about receiving products, distributing products, and selecting where the incoming products are from. The main difference was with selecting individual products and the weight. One version used a drop down menu that had weight entry following each item while the other was a checklist menu that led users to a list where the weights of each item would be entered. We built two clickable prototypes in Axure using the Android widget library. The current versions were built only for a specific scenario involving an incoming shipment from Northwest Harvest, so there are a limited number of links. The prototypes were both tested at the GFB with Sydney and their head volunteer. Testing showed that users were capable of completing the task given to them with ODK Collect in less than 30 seconds and those users preferred the check box style list over the drop down list when selecting items. The prototypes can be found at: http://students.washington.edu/kkjs709/fb%20prototype%20%28check%20list%29/ http://students.washington.edu/kkjs709/android%20fb%20prototype/ Technical Aspects For the task of adding items to the inventory we will create forms using ODK Collect. This is a free and open source solution that we feel will work well for our project because of its low learning curve. It is very easy to create new forms with spreadsheets using Excel or similar programs. Because these forms can be created with spreadsheet programs, with which many
people are familiar, it will be quick and easy to make changes or tailor forms to certain food banks. Every time a form is submitted, the data will be extracted using ODK Aggregate and sent to a database that will be updated via web requests. As of right now, we are thinking that the database will be hosted on Google App Engine (GAE). The main reason we will most likely be using GAE is that ODK Aggregate has already been integrated to work well with it. However, GAE is a great solution for many other reasons. Firstly, it offers a remote server that users will not have to worry about maintaining or even physically storing. Secondly, it is offered at little to no cost, making it cost effective for non- profit food banks. The second phase our project involves creating an application to generate actual reports based on the information in the database. We think both a smart phone app and a desktop application will work well. A smart phone app will be useful because most users should be familiar with the interface used for inventory purposes, but a desktop application will offer more flexibility and ease with printing documents. The smart phone app will be for Android, so it will be programmed using Java. We have not made many concrete decisions regarding this element of our solution, but users will be able to view the inventory information, make corrections or updates, and most importantly generate the forms (most likely in PDF format) for sending to the necessary organizations. These will be easy to save, e- mail, and print. Conclusion Food banks need to track inventory for several reasons: to control distribution, to understand what they need to order, and to properly report back to organizations about their donations. Seattle- area food banks have different inventory- and client- tracking methods, but
are all required to report back to Food Lifeline, Northwest Harvest, the City of Seattle, and other government agencies on a monthly basis in regard to donations received from them. Based on findings from our research and fieldwork, we have determined that food banks do not need accurate inventory tracking and are able to work efficiently with estimates. They do not want to use scanners or introduce any tedious method of tracking every item, but they would like an easier way of tracking what they receive from the larger organizations listed above. Tracking collections through a database helps to smooth out the retrieval of data and thus permit easier reports such that monthly reports are easier to generate. Currently, inventory processes include a lot of data entry; food bank managers compile paperwork gathered throughout the month and have to calculate everything by hand as the reports are due. We have designed and created a prototype for Android enabled devices that allow users to input information about incoming shipments so that they may update a database with the information as it comes in.
Works Cited Cakici, O.E. and Groenevelt, H., Seidmann, A.;, "Efficient Inventory Management by Leveraging RFID in Service Organizations," System Sciences (HICSS), 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on, vol., no., pp.1-11, 5-8 Jan. 2010. Feeding America Selects Nuance PDF Converter Professional as Desktop Standard. All Business. ENP Newswire, 24 Feb. 2010. Web. 25 Jan. 2011. Gerrard, Stephen. Food Banks Raise Interest in Voice to Keep Costs Low. Material Handling Management Aug. 2010: 19-22. MHMonline.com. Web. 25 Jan. 2011. Jones, Erick C. and Vikram Verma, John L. Volakis, Mei Jiang. How RFID Reliability Effects Inventory Control Accuracy. Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium (2007): 2757-2760. IEEE. Web. 26 Jan. 2011. Kribach, A.; Boulmalf, M.; Harroud, H.;, "Supply chain related RFID: FlexRFID generic interface design and implementation," I/V Communications and Mobile Network (ISVC), 2010 5th International Symposium on, vol., no., pp.1-4, Sept. 30 2010- Oct. 2 2010. Mabli, James. "Hunger in America 2010." Harvest Hope Food Bank Local Report. Comp. Denise Holland. Columbia: Harvest Hope Food Bank, 2010. Print. Tibbits, George. "Food Banks go High- tech to Feed the Hungary." Food Lifeline. Associated Press, November 27, 2009. Web. 26 Jan 2011.