The
second stop of the traveling university lead the students to Maradankadawala,
home of the Himalee Dairy Company where the owner, Mr. C.A.H.M.N. Chandrasekara,
called the students for help. In 1998, he started his small curd production
with 3.5 litres of buffalo milk per day. Currently he processes nearly 5,000
litres a day and aims to be one of the biggest sustainable curd producers
within the next five years. This enormous growth and their future expansion
plans are associated with various business and environmental challenges, which he
hopes to resolve with the help of the Travelling University as its motto is ‘bring
out the students’ creativity to optimise the business competiveness of Sri
Lankan SMEs’.
Hence,
the students started to evaluate the
“strength-weaknesses-opportunities-and-threats (SWOT)” of his current business
structure and the future outline of his new factory being currently constructed.
While analysing the company’s material and energy flows the neuralgic points
had been spotted: supply chain management as well as energy and waste water
management. Having identified the challenges, the “student consultant”
immediately started to develop appropriate solutions for him laying out the
technical details and business plans.
Fully
exploiting their creativity and knowledge, the students developed new marketing
concepts, product portfolio diversification plans, combined energy waste and
waste water treatment by anaerobic digestion as well as a sound human resource
development concept for his future staff demand. The final results of the
one-day and nearly a full night’s work have been presented to the family
members running the business.
‘Himalee Dairies. As you deserve the best’,
is the new slogan for the newly developed product portfolio. The owners and the
students are sure that this slogan will became a reality if the proposed
concept parts and be turned into reality.
One
more time, the students and their university supervisors proofed that an
interdisciplinary university-industry project jointly handled by five national
development can strengthen the backbone of the Sri Lankan society – the
numerous small and medium sized family business operation throughout the
island.
The
travelling university heads off to Trincomalee, ready to take the next
challenges and help the next companies on their way to their final target in
Jaffna.
The ‘Traveling University’ (TU) is a
signature seminar course of the International Material Flow Management (IMAT)
master degree program offered by the Institute for Applied Material Flow
Management (IfaS). ‘Higher
education for sustainable development’ being the
motto of TU, in this interdisciplinary
seminar course, IfaS
aims to deploy its expertise in tangible projects world over whilst giving the
students the opportunity to put their acquired knowledge into practice in real
time.
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