LFM Volunteerism
For a second year, LFMs volunteer at the Greater Boston Food Bank.
By Shion Hung, LFM '04
May 25, 2004
On Friday, April 16th, twelve hardy LFM’ers woke up after the 80’s C-Function to go to South Boston and volunteer at the Greater Boston Food Bank for a half day. The Greater Boston Food Bank (GBFB) is a warehouse for sorting and distribution of donated food. Not only did they make a difference that day, they put some of their operations expertise to use!
Pictured above: LFM Volunteer Day Participants. Photo by Michelle Bernson, LFM '04
The group of LFM'04 and LFM'05 students worked in the GBFB warehouse to helped sort, inventory and store donated food for future delivery. Participants included first year LFMs Aaron Raphel, Tammy Greenlaw, Jeff Cerilles, Chris Caballero, Chris Kilburn-Peterson, Amber Mazooji, Stew Ongchin and significant other Howard Tang. Second year LFMs included returning volunteers Michelle Bernson, Amber Chesborough, Greg Dibb, Shion Hung and Rachel Sheinbein.
The volunteers were first trained in the existing process. Boxes of food were to be opened and checked for breakage. Next, the food was sorted by type into new boxes, which were filled to a certain weight. Once the sorter felt that a box met the required weight, the box was given to the Quality Assurance (QA) persons, who weighed the boxes and made adjustments as necessary.
As the day progressed, it became evident to the LFM’ers that there were some operational inefficiencies in the stated process. QA was backlogged with a long line of boxes of food while dealing with overweight and underweight boxes. Everyone looked busy, but the total output was constrained by the rework of moving food to and from QA to compensate for weight.
Overall, 264 boxes were sorted, equaling 7,179 lbs. of food!
To help the food bank improve operations in the future, the LFM team plans to document additional suggestions. Greg Dibb experimented with a cell-based sorting system that holds some promise for increased productivity and sorter accountability.