As Singapore’s leading food importer and distributor, Dashmesh Singapore is constantly upgrading to improve productivity and work safety
Dashmesh Singapore Pte Ltd is a leading food importer and distributor in Singapore that specialises in Indian and Pakistani dry food and dairy products. Having been in the business for 35 years, the company operates from a spacious 30,000 square feet warehouse with a fleet of 10 trucks. Its operations are managed by a well-trained team of 60 staff. Its customers include local supermarkets and restaurants, ship chandlers and overseas food suppliers.
Since inception, Dashmesh has enjoyed record sales turnover and revenue almost every year. It has re-invested significant portions of its profits into improving and upgrading its operations, in anticipation of future growth opportunities. It has developed its own premium house brands namely, Temasek Gold for Basmati Rice and the Malika range of dry food products such as spices, lentils and nuts. Today, the company employs SAP IT solutions for its inventory and accounting requirements.
Powering up with workers first
Being in food distribution, the nature of the company’s business requires its workers to carry out physically demanding jobs. With the well-being of its employees in mind, Dashmesh has purchased, with the support of NTUC e2i’s (Employment and Employability Institute) WorkPro Job Redesign, a motorised stacker to make work easier and safer for workers, especially its senior employees.
With the implementation of the motorised stackers, older workers no longer need to manually carry out duties involving the heavy lifting of goods. At a turn of the steering wheel and a touch of the button, goods are smoothly transported from one place to another and lifted to the required height for stacking automatically. This minimises work injuries and increases the productivity of its workers simultaneously.
As soon as its business expanded to include the supply of frozen and chilled food items, Dashmesh immediately redesigned its work processes to ensure the safe and smooth delivery of frozen and chilled food items, without breaking the cold chain. This was done through the setting up of a freezer cold room in its warehouse and the purchase of the Insulated Box with Refrigeration System and Tailgate (IBRST) as part of its delivery fleet.
Supported by e2i, the IBRST has made work for senior workers easier and safer as they are no longer required to carry the products from the storage area to the trucks manually. The items can now be wheeled and lifted to the trucks’ level via the power tailgate before being conveyed into the truck
All these job redesign initiatives have helped the company to raise productivity, enhance work safety and health, as well as shorten working hours.
Dashmesh Singapore has taken many efforts to redesign work processes with the use of new equipment to ensure that the well-being of its workers is taken care of. With tedious tasks performed by machines instead of manual labour, Hui believes that it is not a competition of man versus machine, but a matter of machine aiding man. As an enlightened employer, the company rewards workers impacted by job redesign with attractive salary increments and benefits. This has, in turn, led to higher staff morale, worker retention and a win-win for all.
For more information on Dashmesh Singapore Pte Ltd and the food products distributed by the company, please visit www.dashmesh.com.sg/
