Play #3: The Humble Checklist
When the tech build takes place far away from the installation/use case, make sure you have a very clear checklist of exactly what is needed and share this across your supply chain.
The Pilot: Smart Solar Energy for Healthcare in Zimbabwe
If we introduce internet of things (IoT) connected solar energy systems to rural health clinics, we will enable a 10x increase in out of hours procedures.
Use this play to answer our challenge around supply chains: where the supply chain infrastructure is not good enough to support the tech operating at scale
This play is part of our Frontier Technology Playbook: Plays by DfID Pioneers to Overcome Development Challenges. Click here to read the other plays and an introduction to the Playbook.
The Pioneers: Africa Power Storage
Our smart solar energy system is built in the UK using components from all over the world, assembled in Harare, Zimbabwe, and then transported to rural health clinics across the country. Knowing exactly what to pass down this supply chain, when, and by how much, is critical.
We did a full assessment of our first two clinics before shipping any tech. What was the structure of the roof? Where was their most sunlight? Which room could the inverter and battery be stored in? Then, after installing we iterated our checklist based on what we wished we’d known when we started.
Now we can scale with a much tighter understanding of what we need to build, ship and provide for different types of clinics. Just as importantly, it’s created a tangible way for the team installing the panels to provide feedback and improve our work. We’ll keep iterating our checklist over time to make it more and more accurate.
The Practice
- Run the full end-to-end supply chain on a couple of sites so you can conceive, get feedback on and edit your checklist for final site installation quickly and cheaply.
- Engage your supply chain. Those who transport, build and maintain on-site are the ones with the most knowledge.
- Build profiles for different sites and have different checklists for each one.
Get in touch…
To find out more, get in touch with Mike at mike@aps.network
