COVER STORY age infrastructure and the buildings that are sprouting all around the place. The occupiers and service providers are showing a marked preference for fit to purpose or fit for purpose quality and sustainable properties due to the inherent operational efficiencies, adherence to safety standards, compliances, and better contingency planning for global events. From connected infrastructure or smart infrastructure or smart factories to the mobile workforce, organisations are applying technology to solve the complex problems that stand in the way of sustainable and efficient operations.” Seconding his thoughts, Gopinath Deshpande, SCM Infrastructure Head, Reliance Retail, shared, “Infrastructure definitely is a very key function in the entire supply chain. Within the company, there are many infrastructure opportunities to develop. External infrastructure is something, which is beyond the control of the company like the logistics related infrastructure. At Reliance, the focus has been to improve the infrastructure and build a stateof-art warehouses and we have been spending lot of time to understand the requirements. When I moved to supply chain in the infrastructure division in 2018, at that time, all the Reliance formats were having their own supply chain function and were managing the infrastructure coordination activities by themselves. They did not have specific requirements of the specifications. When we moved into a Central Supply Chain platform, the focus shifted to building state-of-art-infrastructures, to operationalise our warehouses in a quick time and also improve efficiencies. We have got several connected functions within supply chain of Reliance. Our role starts at the network planning itself. Every department has got its own requirements and we try to consolidate the requirements by developing the network plan. We have engaged several consultants to do a network planning and we are reviewing the locations where we want to put all the formats into that location so that we get an advantage in co-locating and consolidating those spaces. We have also reviewed various processes with a view to improvise our operational efficiencies. We are having separate designing team who are looking
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When we moved into a Central Supply Chain platform, the focus shifted to building stateof-art-infrastructures, to operationalise our warehouses in a quick time and also improve efficiencies. We have GOPINATH DESHPANDE engaged several SCM Infrastructure Head, consultants to do a Reliance Retail network planning and we are reviewing the locations where we want to put all the formats into that location so that we get an advantage in co-locating and consolidating those spaces. We have also reviewed various processes with a view to improvise our operational efficiencies. We are having separate designing team who are looking deep into refining the processes. We have done various template designs and have formalised the designs, which is more optimum to us in improving the efficiency of our warehouses. We are looking at defining specifications for large, automated warehouses. We have standardised our designs such as racking and shelving designs with all the suppliers and now we are able to really get our storage system as per our requirements, which has helped us improve our efficiencies and turnaround time of setting up the infrastructure. With all these measures in place, we have moved ahead in last three years by having developed large state-of-the-warehouses and by the end of 2022, we have huge target to meet the business requirement. It’s an exciting period for us. deep into refining the processes. We have done various template designs and have formalised the designs, which is more optimum to us in improving the efficiency of our warehouses. We are looking at defining specifications for large, automated warehouses. We have also started working on the various
infrastructure equipment like storage system, MHEs, etc. Earlier we had limited vendors and they were giving the storage equipment as per their availability and their own designs. We have standardised our designs such as racking and shelving designs with all the suppliers and now we are able to really get our storage
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