Improve, improve, improve! There is always room for improvement, and that is what here at Simoshi we are always pursuing with all of our partners and colleagues at work. Some experiences are shared with our recent meeting with Uganda Stove Manufacturers Limited (Ugastove). Rehema, Ugastove’s CEO, was at our office last week to go through some further changes we are implementing to the design of the chimney connectors.

You can see some corroded connectors on the pictures posted here below. The connectors are the conduits in the institutional improved cook stoves (IICS) that (i) help to channel the smoke from the firewood combustion outside through the chimney pipe, and (ii) make sure the IICS is secured and firmly placed through the cemented wall.

Unfortunately we find that some providers of the metal sheets Ugastove uses to build the connectors had cheated on the quality of the material and in the long term, the heat from the firewood combustion combined with the rain, produce an accelerated rusting that ends up in corroded material.

We quarterly meet with Ugastove to go through quality assurance training sessions and quality control, to ensure all IICS delivered to schools can excel the required standards, not only when the product is new, but also throughout its lifetime. As you can see in this case with the connectors, these IICS have been operating since 2016, so monitoring quality standards is an exercise that has to be performed continuously.

If you want to provide an excellent service, you have to accept you can always improve, improve, improve!