Everything has its time (Ecclesiastes 3:8).  Our Company is of the view that in order to fight poverty, hunger and establish sustainable development and peace,  it is high time we invested in Value Addition and Supply Chain Management and Development. Which is what exactly makes the difference between a developed country and low developing country. It is this which proves the evidence and praiseworthiness of a product and shows the service effects a Company does to a product and hence the money value or call it the price of the product.  In other words, what does the product fetches from the customers /or consumers in the competitive world market.  Poor countries are poor because they are poor not because they lack resources but because they are still failing to competitively improve the quality and quantity of their products.  Sincerely, as Sir Isaac Newton once remarked that: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants” (Isaac Newton, 1675).  Surely, Value Addition /or Value Chain Development is not a new thing at all because the concept of “a value chain” was pioneered by American academic Michael Porter in his 1985 book “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance” (Michael Porter, 1985). He used the idea to show how companies add value to their raw materials to produce products that are eventually sold to the public.  In summary, a value chain is a set of activities that an organization carries out to create value for its customers

Our Company is copying and applying the concept of the Value Chain from a business management perspective. Our Company is therefore here to train Ugandans and Africans at large so that each Ugandan or African within the production line becomes a Value Chain Managers who can look for opportunities in which he or she can contribute using all his/her willpower and talent to add value to his/her business by adding value and quality thus attracting a higher lucrative price for his or her product. This always starts at the micro level before we gaining at the Macro level because it is “the aggregate micro levels” which aggregates to form “the macro level”.  They may look for ways to cut back on shortages, prepare product plans, and work with others in the chain to add value to the customer.  Once each one’s business gets the required number of customers that pay the costs of production to sustain such a business to break even, then profitability will be achieved.  Once profitability is achieved, then more creativity will be installed within the Value Chain and once this is achieved, then the invisible hand in production will be set and the sky will be the limit. Our Company is always mindful of the fact that: “The unobservable market force that helps the demand and supply of goods in a free market to reach equilibrium automatically is the invisible hand” (Adam Smith, 1776).  Sincerely, once Adam Smith’s theory of the invisible hand takes the upper hand within the production line, then automatically the “value chain” is leveraged and to the extent that large-scale government intervention and regulation of the economy is neither necessary nor beneficial. This is well expressed by one of the Fathers of modern Economics, Adam Smith in his famous books entitled: “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” in which he suggested that if people were allowed to trade freely, then self-interested traders present in the market would compete with each other, leading markets towards the positive output with the help of an invisible hand (Adam Smith,1776). It implies therefore, that Value Chain Development liberates the economy and liberalizes the market thus making it a free market economy.  Once achieved, it relieves our government from excess borrowing. The government should not fear this.  Besides, I can superbly assert that the invisible hand is a natural force that self regulates the market economy. Let me illustrate this by the example of invisible hand with an individual business person who makes a decision to buy FAQ Coffee and resolves out of his or her creativity to make them better off by adding value and supplying it to the customer.  Such a decision, makes the economic society as a whole better off.  Now let me take a live example from Coffee. So, let us just imagine that entire Coffee Value Addition about Coffee and Coffee making from garden to cup; or imagine from coffee nursery bed, to coffee trees, coffee flowers, to red cherries’ picking, drying, beans, coffee hulling, coffee milling, sorting, coffee bean packing to machines, including roasting, grinding, packing, labelling, recipes, health, you add on all the trivial value addition up to the coffee cup on the table in the final consumer’s hands.  During that process of Cocoa and Coffee value addition development, many unemployed people and more particularly the Youths and the Women will find jobs.

Through Value Chain Development, our company therefore makes it possible; for possible products, information, and finances to flow, optimizing the processes in which they flow, and creating better value (in both quality and price) in the relationships between companies, as well as improving the overall efficiency of business.  In this regard, our Coffee and Cocoa farmers will be empowered to integrated; satisfying customers and creating shared value equitability as illustrated in Figure 1 below:

Figure 1: Showing the correlation between value addition and the value of the product and its price.

Consequently, there is a tendency that each step in the Value Chain Development increases the value of the product as well as an increase in its price. Other factors remaining constant (Ceteris Paribus), Adding value to a product or service helps companies attract more customers, which boosts the Company’s revenue which is the prime driver of profitability.

This is exactly what Adam Smith meant whereby the invisible hand is a force that somehow acts on the whole society so that of all individuals are pursuing their own interests, the needs of the whole society will be met (Adam Smith, 1776).  In other words, the invisible hand directs economic activity by letting people produce and buy the best goods and services based on their own desire.  So the freedom to produce and buy, based on one’s own desire or passion, is part of the dynamics of the invisible hand which improves society.  This is exactly what Professor Michael Eugenio Porter situates as the five forces in his famous book entitled: “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance” (Michael Porter, 1985).

It is these five steps in the value chain process that our Company VASUCHADE intends to implement and create everlasting impact. They give our Company the ability to create value exceeding the cost of providing its good or service to customers. By maximising the activities in any one of these five steps, allows our Company to have a competitive advantage over competitors within this industrial average.  Subsequently, our Company follows the five steps or activities as outlined by (Michael Porter, 1985) as follows:

1. Inbound Logistics: Receiving, Warehousing, and Inventory Control.
2. Operations:Value-creating activities that transform inputs into products,
3. Outbound Logistics:Activities required to get a finished product to a customer.

(Warehousing, Inventory Management, Order fulfillment, Transport and Shipping).

4. Marketing and Sales:Activities related with getting a buyer to purchase a product.
5. Service:Activities that maintain and enhance a product’s value such as customer  support and warranty service.

In order to help streamline the five primary steps, our Company has set up a series of support activities which include: Capacity Building, Staff Training, Human Resource Management, Consultancy Services, Procurements, Market Services, Commission, Business Analysis, Provision of Cost and Management Accounting Services, Promotion of Tourism, Research and Development in Organic Health Foods and Drinks, Sustainable Agriculture Development, Development of Inclusive Markets in Agriculture and Trade, Information Technology and Data Banking, Agricultural Technology, Machinery, Mass Media, Construction, Infrastructure Development and Transportation of Goods

So, in order to have a profitable value chain, our Company requires connections between what Consumers demand and what we are producing. Simply put, the connection or sequence in the value chain originates from the customer’s request, moves through the value chain process, and finally ends at the finished product. Our Company therefore places a great amount of focus on things such as product testing, innovation, research and development and marketing.

Our Company Does Supply Chain Management and Development:

Subsequently, as our name goes: “Value Supply Chain Development” (VASUCHADE), our Company too deals with the Supply Chain Management.  Our Company comprises the flow of all information, products, materials, and funds between different stages of creating and selling a product to the end user. The concept of the supply chain comes from an operational management perspective. Every step in the process—including creating a good or service, manufacturing it, transporting it to a place of sale, and selling it is part of our Company’s Supply Chain.  Since the supply chain includes all functions involved in receiving and filling a customer request our Company too does the following quality performance like:

• Product development
• Marketing
• Operations
• Distribution
• Finance
• Customer Service

It is because of the important process of the Supply Chain Management our Company is linked to large International Corporations. Furthermore, it is still for this reason of supply chain management that our Company is employing highly skilled personnel and expertise to maintain it.