Presenting a few winning entries of Under-30 Super Stars, Under-40 Super Achievers, and Exemplary Supply Chains Awards 2022. They have been the champions of resilience and change.
Honouring the best in class, the Celerity Supply Chain Awards night was truly a great evening to remember and be a part of the envious logistics fraternity that is set to chart an incredible growth story. A new category of awards, Exemplary Awards were introduced for corporates running exemplary supply chains. Here’s the account of some of the most deserving winning entries of Under-30 Super Stars, Under-40 Super Achievers, and Exemplary Supply Chains Awards 2022, which will be continued in the next issue as well…
Rajesh K Khosla, President & CEO, AGI Glaspac, highlights that the next five years will be a focus on transitioning towards sustainability and smart packaging solutions.
This panel discussion deep dived into Indian manufacturers’ strategies and stance to seize the opportunities and make India the next Manufacturing Hub of the world.
Concerted efforts on enhancing supply chain efficiency can greatly impact its future for the overall economic growth and employment uptick of Sri Lanka.
Editor: Prerna LodayaDISCLAIMER: This magazine is being published on the condition and understanding that the information, comments and views it contains are merely for guidance and reference and must not be taken as having the authority of, or being binding in any way on, the author, editors, publishers who do not take any responsibility whatsoever for any loss, damage or distress to any person on account of any action taken or not taken on the basis of this publication. Despite all the care taken, errors or omissions may have crept inadvertently into this publication. The publisher shall be obliged if any such error or omission is brought to her notice for possible correction in the next edition.
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Dear Readers,
September 2022 is going to be remembered for many events. The long-awaited National Logistics Policy was announced on 17th September. The policy is a comprehensive document encompassing all ministries related to shipping, ports, roads and highways, waterways, aviation, and railways, to ensure improved intra and inter-modal logistics connectivity for systematic infrastructure development, end transport-related challenges, and digitisation for seamless transactions.
The NLP envisions to reduce logistics costs and bring it to global benchmarks by 2030, thereby also paving the way to bring India into the top 25 countries in the Global Logistics Performance Index.
While NLP was the big news at home, globally, India has been trending at the 77th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 77). India was mentioned by leaders of 12 countries on matters ranging from support during the pandemic to the Russia-Ukraine War and a permanent seat in UNSC.
Back home, new and upgraded version of Vande Bharat Express was flagged off. It is touted to provide passengers with aircraft-like travelling experience and advanced state-of-the-art safety features. And while I was writing this, the PM of India also launched 5G.
This month we also held the Celerity Supply Chain Tribe Conference & Awards as a physical event in Mumbai. 21 under-40s, 13 under-30s and 9 organisations walked away with the Celerity ‘Victory’ Statue. Seven panel discussions, with topics ranging from Value Chains to Multi-modal Logistics to Talent, saw 35+ thought leaders converge, discuss, and share relevant ideas and examples with the audience.
As we move into the last quarter of the year, looking forward to many such progressive news and initiatives.
Charulata Bansal
Publisher
Charulata.bansal@celerityin.com www.supplychaintribe.com
Published by Charulata Bansal on behalf of Celerity India Marketing Services
Edited by: Prerna Lodaya • e-mail: prerna.lodaya@celerityin.com
Designed by: Lakshminarayanan G • e-mail: lakshdesign@gmail.com
Printed by: Xposures, A 210, Byculla Service Industrial Estate, D K Cross Road, Byculla, Mumbai- 400027.
Logistics Partner: Blue Dart Express Limited
“The demand for glass packaging products is growing due to the rising population, increasing income levels, evolving lifestyles, and growing economy. Another strong focus for the packaging industry in 2022 and beyond, is on providing sustainable packaging solutions for various sectors. Every company that deals with packaged goods is now actively considering joining the green wave as the consumers are more conscious and deliberate about their environmental footprint today. The next five years will be focusing on transitioning towards sustainability and smart packaging solutions, “highlights Rajesh K Khosla, President & CEO, AGI Glaspac, a part of Packaging Products Division (PPD), HSIL Ltd, makers of the iconic brand ‘Hindware’, during an exclusive interview….
Share with us AGI Glaspac's journey to becoming one of the leading container glass bottle manufacturers in India.
AGI Greenpac (erstwhile HSIL Ltd.) is a leading packaging products company. AGI Greenpac acquired AGI Glaspac in 1981 to foray into the manufacturing of glass containers in India. Today, AGI Glaspac is a leading packaging company with a wide range of glass packaging containers ranging from 5 ml to 4000 ml and has an average capacity of melting 1600 tonnes of glass per day. The company has two strategically located, state-of-the-art manufacturing plants, one in Hyderabad and the other at Bhongir (Telangana). Leveraging its innovation strength, the company continues to introduce new and customised products to cater to the ever-evolving needs of the customers and is leading the sector towards adopting sustainable practices.
Recently, AGI Glaspac with an investment of Rs220 crore has commissioned a green facility to manufacture ‘Specialty Glass’ in Bhongir, Telangana. The plant has a combined
capacity to process 154 metric tonnes and will produce about 70 lakh bottles and containers per day. The high-quality specialty glass products will cater to industries such as pharmaceuticals, including vials, perfumery, cosmetics, and high-end liquor.
What is the overall market size of the glass packaging industry in the country? What is the market share of your company at present? What is the target ahead?
The past decade has witnessed significant changes in the packaging products industry driven by a host of factors such as new market penetration, the emergence of contactless delivery, and the changing ownership dynamics across the world. Glass packaging is a premium and one of the most trusted forms of packaging for health, taste, and environmental safety. This ensures its continuous usage worldwide, across a range of end-user industries, despite the heavy competition from other packaging materials.
In India, the Packaging Industry is estimated to report a CAGR of 26.7%
during 2022-2027. The factors driving the demand for packaging can be attributed to the rising population, growing income levels, changing lifestyles, and increased internet penetration.
We are the second-largest glass container company in India, and we strive for continued excellence in the business through our innovation, valueadded product mix, quality, and designs. Our marquee clientele comprises key brands from diverse sectors like AlcoBev, pharmaceuticals, FMCG, and others, derisking us from dependence on any specific sector. Our long-standing relationship with the clients helped us navigate through challenging times owing to the assured commitment we share with them.
We expect to grow at an accelerated rate on the back of our investment in technology, our people, and streamlining of processes. In addition to it, our foray into specialty glass will further help us cement our position in high-margin sectors such as perfumery and beauty. The ongoing expansion of sectors such as food & beverage, pharmaceutical &
Mr. Rajesh K Khosla brings to the table a passion for business development that reflects in his stellar work ethic that focuses on practical implementation, his end-to-end approach towards business growth that entails employee development, financial analysis, and debottlenecking. His ability to create convergence between innovation and creativity has helped the PPD business at HSIL to scale newer heights.
Mr. Khosla is the Current Chairman of EFSI for Telangana & Andhra Pradesh Region. Mr. Khosla packs rich corporate experience, with 27 years spread across domains such as global and international businesses, business strategy, mining operations, and marketing.
The recycling infrastructure is still underdeveloped in India. Hence, the role of the manufacturers and policymakers is vital in adopting more sustainable packaging material to help India achieve its vision to replace single-use plastic with green and eco-friendly packaging.
healthcare, personal care & cosmetics, and home care will further be expected to boost demand for our glass container packaging.
What are the changing dynamics in this industry especially in the last two years?
COVID-19 posed some unique challenges for packaging products companies. This resulted in a loss of business and revenue at a broader level. There is a strong momentum towards sustainable solutions and increasing customers opting for products that are sustainable is gaining momentum, which in turn, is getting industries to have sustainability embedded across their value chain. In a nutshell, the shift to online shopping increased global regulation of packaging waste, and the acceleration of consumers’ sustainability concerns combined has changed how packaging products companies do business.
What were the challenges faced and how did you counter them?
Development of a regulatory framework, competition, and fragmented market are a few challenges faced by the Indian glass manufacturing industry. Glass product packaging continues to face fierce competition from other forms of packaging in India, where, for commercial reasons, the use of alternative packaging material is still sought after.
Covid Outbreak bought another set of challenges such as slow market growth, increased cost input prices including raw materials, etc. However, we at AGI Glaspac, effectively navigated the new challenges on the back of key initiatives such as the adoption of a new tempering method for strengthening glass containers amongst others such as follows:
We used multiple fuels and passed on certain costs to customers
and showcased flexibility on transportation mode as and when needed
Smart packaging designs are gaining great momentum lately from across the sectors. Can you elucidate this with innovative examples?
Created a lightweight container in different geometric shapes
Used newer technologies such as single stage forming to produce thinner but stronger glass containers
Developed a coating on the surface of the glass to avoid strength loss
Introduced heat-resistant Pyrex glass
Produced internally embossed glass bottles
How container glass manufacturing sector is helping pharmaceutical companies fight Covid-19 pandemic through the supply chain mechanism?
The COVID-19 pandemic posed significant challenges and multiple national and state-wise lockdowns slowed down and, in some instances, even temporarily stop the flow of raw materials and finished goods, disrupting manufacturing as a result. The industry ensured the following to combat the challenges in the supply chains:
Estimated available inventory along the value chain including spare parts and used after-sales stock to use as a bridge to keep production running and enabled delivery to customers
Well designed, flexible packaging is gaining importance as it can deliver an enticing promotional message to consumers looking for new product experiences. We, at AGI Glaspac, have a comprehensive bottle design team, a glass analytical laboratory, and a training school. The technology for the production of glass containers by the NNPB method (Narrow Neck Press and Blow), i.e., pressand-blow development of lightweight narrow-necked glass container products, has been implemented at our plant. For each segment such as pharmaceutical, liquor, beer, and food, we have lightweighted bottles constituting 10 to 14% of our production.
Glass is the preferred packaging material for beer owing to its superior UV absorption properties. We produce beer containers in amber, green, and flint colours in NNPB (Narrow Neck Press and Blow) & BB (Blow and Blow) technologies for almost all the key customers in India and for some key European customers as well.
How is it betting big growth of glass industry with plastic phasing out?
The recycling infrastructure is still underdeveloped in India. Hence, the role of the manufacturers and policymakers is vital in adopting more sustainable packaging material to help India achieve its vision to replace single-use plastic with green and eco-friendly packaging.
Assessed realistic -customer demand and responded to (or, where possible, contain) shortage-buying behaviour of customers
Optimized production and distribution capacity to ensure employee safety and engaged with communication teams to share infection risk levels and work-from home options
Identified and secured logistics capacity, estimated capacity and accelerated where possible,
With the government deciding to phase out single-use plastic, the demand for glass is expected to witness a boom in the coming years. Glass has always been the safest and the most viable option for the packaging and use of food and liquid. Glass can be recycled multiple times, so it doesn't have to end up in landfills. It is cost-effective, considering its durability and recyclability.
Glass manufacturers are leveraging technology to create innovative products to meet the already existing demand more efficiently and effectively. We have
accelerated technological advancements to stay ahead of the game. Increased investments in R&D to develop a range of new innovative products such as smart glass bottles and containers whose colour changes depending on the liquid temperature (medicines, wines, perishable products, etc.,) are gaining momentum and these initiatives will help the glass packaging industry to grow at an accelerated rate.
We would like to know from you the optimal usage of multimodal transportation for your products across the country.
AGI Glaspac uses roadways and railway facilities for all multimodal transportation that may either be for inward or outward material movement.
We are also exploring the use of water ways for transportation of material movement. As we are expanding our business to international markets, it’s now very important that we have a solution to deliver our products overseas in most efficient and a quicker way.
How did you plan inventory management during tough times and what’s your strategy ahead in times to come?
We have a scientific approach towards inventory management, which support all stakeholders to focus on their business.
We have developed a storage facility to keep around 50-60 days of inventory, which ensures we are able to meet all our business partner’s requirements. We also respond quickly to any sort of changes to meet customer’s requirements.
What are the critical elements shaping the packaging landscape in India?
There are some megatrends that are reshaping the packaging industry and raising the bar for performance such as:
Redefined sustainability: Sustainability is redefining alongside hygiene and consumer safety concerns. In fact, the present enhanced focus on hygiene and food safety is likely to become the next normal and a high priority for both consumers and packaging customers (FMCG companies and retailers) across the entire value chain.
E-commerce demands: With consumer habits evolving, spending on groceries, particularly food has substantially increased, and customers are buying goods online, fuelling a strong acceleration of e-commerce shipments and other home-delivery services.
Digitization of Packaging: With real-time reporting and analytics, institutional customers are tracking supply chains far more closely than before, perhaps shifting from annual or quarterly to weekly monitoring. Increased transparency is not only a matter of cost efficiency but also a way to help build a more resilient supply chain and assure the health and safety of products. For packaging companies, this move could offer opportunities to support customers by increasing the integration of technology in the packaging itself.
Glass bottles continue to be the most popular choice among consumers because they preserve the flavour and taste of food and beverages the best. Glass is a sustainable, fully recyclable material that provides great environmental benefits such as helping in mitigating climate change and saving precious natural resources. Glass containers manufactures are increasingly partnering with their clients in producing sustainably designed bottles and overall help India create a more circular economy.
According to you, how is recycling infrastructure shaping up in the country to replace plastic with ecofriendly packaging?
India is on the right path with the upcoming ban on single-use plastic by the government. However, the ban is not sufficient on its own and must be supported by other initiatives and Government regulations. An improvement needs to be made to plastic recyclability, and investment in research and development for alternatives should be a priority now. There is a need for a clear roadmap with timelines by the government along with the need to increase the general awareness in public and corporates about eliminating single-use plastics. With affordable alternatives to single-use plastic and a better commitment to recycling plastic waste, the aim of a complete elimination is achievable, but all the stakeholders – the Indian Government, companies, and consumers – need to work together towards it.
How can glass packaging ensure sustainability and adaptability towards India’s health goals?
Glass bottles continue to be the most popular choice among consumers because they preserve the flavour and taste of food and beverages the best. Glass is a sustainable, fully recyclable material that provides great environmental benefits such as helping in mitigating climate change and saving precious natural resources. Glass containers manufactures are increasingly partnering with their clients in producing sustainably designed bottles and overall help India create a more circular economy.
Share with us your sustainable strategies and how supply chain finds a significant place in this?
We have taken numerous sustainable strategies over the years as follows:
Reduction in the overall packaging materials: Re-designing or optimising packaging to use less material has helped us lower the costs associated with packaging and transportation as the total weight of the product is reduced. In addition, our packaging material can mostly be recycled or returned. We are also
partnering with our customers to use their end-use shippers, which reduces paper usage as well as the cost.
Maintain Compliance: We ensure that our supply chain meets environmental regulations for sourcing, clean air, and emissions.
Source from sustainable suppliers: We collaborate with our suppliers who also have long-term sustainability goals embedded in their system and are aligned with our sustainability goals.
Reduction of Inventory: We eliminate costly stock-outs and wasteful overstocks by balancing the supply and demand. Excess inventory can be costly to maintain and may become obsolete if products are not sold.
Reduce Carbon Emissions: By identifying the most efficient route and delivery options, we are continuously reducing the carbon footprint of our company. Moreover, shortening of the supply chain by sourcing raw materials closer to the end customer is helping us to further reduce carbon emissions associated with transportation.
Your views on how can India become a preferred destination for packaging industry globally and how will AGI play an enabling role in this journey?
According to the Packaging Industry Association of India, the Indian packaging market was valued at $50.5 billion in 2019, and it is expected to reach $204.81 billion by 2025, registering a CAGR of 26.7% from 2020 to 2025. Packaging is one of the high-growth industries in India and is developing at 22-25% a year. The industry has reported steady growth over the past several years and shows high potential for expansion.
Further, Industry 4.0 for Make in India and Aatmanirbhar Bharat for the manufacturing sector is effectively promoted by the Government. Within the packaging industry, there is a lot of innovation taking place. There are numerous factors that are driving the transition towards increased sustainable packaging practices, and it’s still rising. A part of this drive is pushed by healthconscious consumers, the government, and industry leaders’ new laws and
India is on the right path with the upcoming ban on single-use plastic by the government. However, the ban is not sufficient on its own and must be supported by other initiatives and Government regulations. An improvement needs to be made to plastic recyclability, and investment in research and development for alternatives should be a priority now. There is a need for a clear roadmap with timelines by the government along with the need to increase the general awareness in public and corporates about eliminating single-use plastics. With affordable alternatives to single-use plastic and a better commitment to recycling plastic waste, the aim of a complete elimination is achievable, but all the stakeholders – the Indian Government, companies, and consumers – need to work together towards it.
regulations coming into force.
AGI Glaspac is the leading glass containers manufacturers in the country and has invested in technology upgrades, inspection, packaging systems, warehousing, and logistics. We are looking at increasing our production capacity to meet the rising market demand over the next five years. We are also trying to set up contemporary trends in the industry by leveraging technology to create innovative products that will help meet the demand more efficiently.
Aligned to the ‘Make in India’ and ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ vision, our new specialty glass facility in Bhongir from its inception to the manufacturing process to packaging, ensures we have minimal environmental impact and footprint. The plant will manufacture glass containers catering to high-end pharmaceuticals including vials, perfumery, cosmetics, and other segments. We are witnessing demand from the F&B, pharmaceutical sectors, and beauty sector, and even end consumers have started indicating a preference for glass.
What does the future hold for the packaging industry in India and
where do you see AGI Glaspac five years from now?
When we look at the global scale of the packaging industry, it is a huge economic generator. Statistics indicate that the demand for the world packaging industry will reach USD1.05 trillion by 2024. And when we focus on India, the Packaging Industry is expected to register a CAGR of approximately 26.7% from 2020 to 2025.
The demand for glass packaging products is growing due to the rising population, increasing income levels, evolving lifestyles, and growing economy. Another strong focus for the packaging industry in 2022 and beyond, is on providing sustainable packaging solutions for various sectors. Every company that deals with packaged goods is now actively considering joining the green wave as the consumers are more conscious and deliberate about their environmental footprint today. The next five years will be focusing on transitioning towards sustainability and smart packaging solutions.
After a long hiatus of three years from our debut event in August 2019, Celerity hosted yet another powerpacked starry awards evening on September 14, 2022. This on-ground event, after having hosted it online for two years (due to the onset of the pandemic), was even bigger & better with it now taking shape of a day-long conference focussing on every facet of the supply chain and offering a poised platform to next gen logisticians and stalwarts to gather under one roof and discuss on the fast-unfolding multi-dimensional supply chain landscape.
Honouring the best in class, the Celerity Supply Chain Awards night was truly a great evening to remember and be a part of the envious logistics fraternity that is set to chart an incredible growth story. A new category of Awards, Exemplary Awards was introduced for corporates running exemplary supply chains. Handpicked by a panel of Jury members consisting of senior supply chain practitioners, the winners have set benchmarks amongst their peers.
Here’s the account of some of the most deserving winning entries of Under-30 Super Stars, Under-40 Super Achievers, and Exemplary Supply Chains Awards 2022, which will be continued in the next issue as well…
The genset business of one of my organisations caters to selling of diesel gensets for retail and industrial segments. It has two manufacturing models – assembling in-house and subcontracting to OEMs scattered across India. The sourcing for the outsourced model was done by sub-contractors themselves. Subcontracting models were relatively costlier than the in-house ones. The assembly cost was at par with the in-house cost; hence, the main challenge lies in direct material sourcing, which these local players won’t have owing to lack of volumes. We decided to consolidate the demand of all the local OEMs for components contributing to 80% of BOM cost and reached out to respective category sourcing leads for machined and moulded items, who could utilise their leverage on auto component suppliers to achieve better rates. Through this innovative solution, savings of 9% on direct material costs was achieved on subcontracted models, which made our genset brand more cost competitive in the market. Increase in credit terms to give additional savings of 1.25% as our centralised sourcing team with better leverage dealt with suppliers on behalf of local players.
Ayush Agarwal, Co-founder & Chief Business Officer, Intugine Technologies Pvt Ltd.
Intugine embarked on a journey to empower global enterprises with real-time visibility of shipments across road, rail, ocean, and air. Creating an integrated network large enough to cater to most of our customers' requirements was challenging. We built a comprehensive visibility solution to track and trace freight across modalities by integrating with multiple systems like government infrastructure, telecom operators, carrier companies, etc. Our solutions improved OTIF and order-to-delivery TAT, helped eliminate operational inefficiencies, and reduced logistics costs. Today, we have helped optimise and digitise over 75 brands' supply chain functions and are proud to be the only real-time multimodal supply chain visibility company in India.
My first corporate exposure was as an Operations Summer Intern at Lenovo Pvt. Ltd. At Lenovo, I worked on redesigning the reverse logistics of electronic devices to eliminate product pilferage and subsequent sales loss. It was a stand-alone project where I was working under the guidance of the inventory manager for the organisation. As an intern when I joined, given the complexity of the project, my guide was sceptical if a student with no corporate experience would be able to contribute significantly to the project. Not much concerned by this perception, I started reaching out to stakeholders, cross-functional teams and other individuals involved in the project to gain understanding and hold of the project. After 15 days, I had sufficient analysis done and presented my ideas to him. He was amazed to see the progress and realized that the project could be completed on time. We worked together as a team and the project was completed on-time yielding savings of $1.3 Mn Dollars. I was awarded the Best Summer intern Title along with a Pre-Placement Interview offer from Lenovo for delivering the project. This experience made me learn the power of persistence and believing in self.
HUL acquired the Health Food Drinks (HFD) business from GSK CH in April 2020. The acquisition was not only for the Indian subsidiary of GSK CH, but Bangladesh and Sri Lanka as well. Both countries imported HFD products from India. On day 1, India supply chain was supposed to run on JDE & BPCS as the ERP, while the importing countries had to be live on SAP U2K2. This implied the handshake of two different ERP systems had to be seamless in order to avoid service loss. The ask was clear, apart from the technical go live, 35+ Indian employees had to be onboarded on SAP across 4 factories, in a span of 3 months. This entailed ERP licensing, training costs and the risk of supply disruption if the documentation is not first time right. The solution proposed was to hire Capgemini (CG) resources (existing third party) to do the transactions in SAP on behalf of Indian GSK factories. It was a challenging negotiation with them to deploy additional resources as part of their existing contract. With no precedence to this, multi – stakeholder alignment involving Technology teams, Factories, Finance and Legal to build 25+ masters in SAP, and onboard Capgemini as the partner. An exhaustive list of 100+ activities and RACI charts along with 2 User Acceptance Tests were conducted in the test server before going live. Co-ordination between remotely located CG resources (who were doing the backend transactions) and printing of physical invoice from factories was done in real-time. The required documentation at customs was tested too from a legal perspective to ensure no stone unturned for endto-end exports transaction. This effort saved 155KEuros at 4 factory locations. Apart from cost avoidance, this model eliminated the supply risks specially during Covid, due to manpower shortage in factories. For this initiative, I was awarded the Nutrition Make Cutover Hero.
As the primary subject matter expert of Warehouse Automation and Material Flow System (MFS) – an automation module within SAP, I significantly contributed to the growth of my organization as one of the market leaders in the Supply Chain and IT consulting domain by driving complex warehouse automation solutions for our clients who were embarking on a digital transformational journey by integrating with ASRS, Conveyor Systems, Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs).
I designed the product roadmap for Lighthouse - our in-house Supply Chain Planning solution which caters to the SME segment. I envisioned a revamped user experience and algorithmic robustness which does away with the siloed approach to supply, demand, replenishment planning. This also involved the incorporation of AI / ML algorithms. The revamped solution resulted in 15% improvement in forecast accuracy (RMSE) for our existing clients, fewer disruptions in the planning cycle (25%), and reduction in inventory holding costs for our biggest Lighthouse client in the US by 8% through product segmentation and improved algorithms for demand planning such as Croston's Method, Neural Networks.
Bharti Yadav, Manufacturing Manager –Tea Manufacturing Site, Hindustan Unilever Ltd.
Isha Agarwal, Global Planning Excellence Manager - Asia, Hindustan Unilever Ltd.
Rohit Kamath, Project Manager – Digital Supply Chain, Stellium Inc
Looking back on my 19 years of experience, there were many significant innovations & breakthroughs that enabled me to achieve, advance in my career and contribute to Organization's Success. Started the journey by breaking gender stereotypes with manufacturing engineering as qualification and working as the first female in the team of building and commissioning of machines. Led many innovations and projects like design of Ortho Implants & equipment, enabled connected operation theatres in hospitals, reduced 50% quality defects in water purifier, turned a closing factory into a top performing factory and enabled digital transformation in factories to improve efficiencies. Each of these interventions delighted many patients, consumers, customers and provided significant benefits, cost savings and competitive advantage to organisation.
Srividya Govindarajan, Site Director, Hindustan Unilever Ltd.
My team and I, recognised in early 2021, the commodity inflation trends that are expected to hit at a global scale. The impact we predicted in Apr 2021 for commodity inflation going into 2022 was as high as 15% of the spend portfolio. We realised early on that the existing approaches and traditional practices of cost savings was unlikely to address 15% spend increase coming from unprecedented inflation across multiple commodities. I worked together with our business improvement director, Wendy Rowe and our team to conceptualise and develop a control tower strategy that focused on 4 pillars of execution to address inflation – Pricing; Product Value Engineering; Value Stream Optimization; and Procurement Analytics & Value Add.
The Project framework was aptly named Hummingbird and worked as a rallying cry everyone could get behind to change our existing ways of working and be as agile and efficient as a hummingbird. Our biggest win with the project was the project design and pitching this project to Asia Pacific President and his leadership team to make this an enterprise level strategy for the organisation. Their unflinching support and commitment to the program ensured each stream was resourced and owned by the respective functional leads- Commercial, R&D, Supply Chain, Finance and Procurement teams, all working in unison to address the external challenge.
60 people across different departments worked together on this project delivering more than 6% of our total sales value in the region through project Hummingbird. This is one of the highest value creation projects the region has run, especially in these turbulent times.
The fact that we identified the problem and started early gave us considerable advantage vs competitors. Work is in progress to embed the learnings from this program into long term sustained value creation strategies across the business and to unlock new pillars of value creation. This project has changed the way our organisation looks at value creation. Personally, this has helped me think, act and deliver as a business leader than just as a functional leader of procurement.
In my recent role with Coupang, I was responsible for setting up a control tower function for Coupang. This work involved right from hiring/ setting up a team, driving process/ product charter for Control tower for long term growth and scale. Control tower has now become a more inalienable part of Coupang Supply chain. We have centralised many actions for faster decision making. On a personal front, this experience was rewarding and fulfilling. This has given me lot of confidence and leadership visibility. I have realised that if you are willing to work hard and if you have a great team, you can achieve miracles.
Rajdeep Kumar Mittal, Director – Process Innovation (Control tower), Coupang.com
Arun Sudheendran, Procurement Director, McCormick & Company
In a professional journey spanning over ten years, I have been instrumental in leading various process improvement and digital transformation projects. While working in the supply chain domain, my focus had always been on providing and enhancing visibility. If it’s not visible, you can’t measure. If you can’t measure, you can’t improve.
I led the EU Falsified Medicines Directive Implementation program to ensure organisation’s compliance from a supply perspective. Considering the complexity of the health authority’s regulations, vastness of portfolio and a hard deadline, the project needed a high level of attention to each piece. This required transition of 600+ SKUs in terms of new pack design impacting BOM, 30+ manufacturing lines, and building data exchange connectivity with 50+ partners/National bodies. I structured the program, collaborated with all concerned teams and ensured visibility throughout, so that there was no supply disruption. I followed an agile methodology to ensure any deviation was taken care of promptly and supplies continued, without any capacity loss and/or stock outs in the market.
Yet another of my key contributions was to get the inventory tracker and artwork validity status integrated for DTM, wherein data from multiple sources (3PL/own warehouse/in-transit) was pulled onto a single platform to provide end-to-end FG stock visibility along with release status and best before dates at all nodes. This was later fed to IBP for netting off and planning supply against net demand. The periodic safety variations led to frequent artwork change which came with a hard deadline. So, to ensure business continuity and avoid any packing material destruction, SKU focused approach was developed in collaboration with the regulatory and packaging department so that a batch was packed and released with valid artwork. This enabled country managers to plan monthly sales and any promotions and aided inventory liquidation of SKUs with low shelf life and/or slow moving ones. This helped in keeping the Cost of Lost Opportunity in check while minimising excess stock. These efforts have helped the organisations not just save money, but also deliver excellent customer service.
Ashish Bhatt, Chief Operating Officer, APL Logistics VASCOR Automotive Pvt. Ltd.
I have onboarded all the OEM customers of my organization APLL VASCOR which was really challenging as it was about selling a concept which was non-existent at that time, it was a complete modal shift and realigning strategy task for all of them. It started from a project level where we were taking license from Indian railways to run our own automotive freight trains. It was actually a paradigm shift for the OEMs to switch from road mode to rail mode of transportation. I take pleasure in stating that I was one of the key persons who were a part of this transition in the country and in the industry. We have grown the revenue of the organisation by about 70% in the last two years working in the capacity of Head of the organisation and cemented long-term contracts for a solid base and to ensure that the growth is permanent. During this journey as a part of our commitment towards sustainable logistics, we have reduced our carbon footprint by saving 133,000 Mt of CO2 in the last 8 years.
We, at JFL, delivered ~99.5+% line fill rate despite high demand volatility & supply uncertainty where we receive/perform ~15 million + order annually, deploying over 250 vehicles, 0.2 M+ Km, with a production capacity of close to 350 M units, serving 1650 restaurants with over ~1200 manpower at plant/3PL & 30,000 at restaurants.
We achieved this mean feat by working on agile supply / resource planning, which helped us in getting frequent updates in forecast based on actual situation on ground (Operational stores, daily sales); POS data visibility; demand sensing; continuous supply risk assessment and inventory build-up; intense cross-functional collaboration and a complete visibility of operations (Demand visibility, update on supplies), Suppliers (Supply plan continuity) and QA Team (Shelf-Life Management).
Naveen Srivastava, General Manager –Integrated Supply Chain, Jubilant Foodworks Ltd.This helped us in the improvement in key metrics as compared to the traditional method of stock indenting. Daily forecast accuracy improved by 38%. Stock-out has decreased by 36%. Inter-store stock transfers have reduced by 39% and reduction in emergency indents raised by stores for critical stock items by 10%.
I started my professional stint with Premium Farm Fresh Pvt Ltd., which is into private agri wholesale market. Central Government allowed private player to operate Farmers Markets (Mandies) by issuing central license to break the monopoly of APMCs. So PFFPL was the first company to win this licensing bid for multiple Agri hubs.
My profile here was to develop backward linkages with farmers and bring them onto the marketplace to sale their produce located at Nashik in Maharashtra. PFFPL market had good network of buyers from multiple corporates like Reliance, SAFAL and distributors from cities like Mumbai & Pune. We tried awareness activities to bring farmers in market to sale their goods but the local APMCs and middlemen network were too strong to break.
To break this network, we conceptualised the idea of ‘Hub & Spoke model’ where we mapped all production centres surrounding to our Market (Hub) and mapped them into spoke and decided to start collection centres at spokes. collection centres (Spoke) established on light asset mode on leased land with basic facilities like trade platform, Movable washrooms for farmers, Grading and Packaging sheds. Due to better price realisation and facilities, we started getting tremendous response from farmers and collection centres were flooded with agri produce. Further instead of bringing goods to main market (Hub) from spokes, these collection centres become individual mini marketplaces under hub. Farmers were able to sale their produce with better pricing at their vicinity without incurring cost to bring produce at APMC, eliminating middlemen and commission agents. One after another, we established seven collection centres cum mini markets, and ran the trade successfully for commodities like Tomato, Grapes, Assorted vegetables with total trade value in Crores. Hub & spoke model is successful story now and preferred by many corporates to procure commodities from farmers.
While addressing issues in rural supply chain, our team came across the question, ‘What makes farmers to sale their produce in distressed market?’ And the answer is lack of liquidity and seasonal production with lack of storage facilities where the problem lies in. Credit facilities are not approachable neither flexible at rural economy.
So, to deal with this, we proposed the idea of ‘Farmer’s Warehouse’ during my tenure in Agri warehousing space. We established the first ‘Farmer’s Warehouse’ with all statutory compliance at Latur (MH) where farmers to store their goods. Warehouse Receipt (WHR) was being issued to farmers against stored goods. But to attract financial institutes to lend farmers, there must be some guarantee to safeguard lending for banks. To ease this, we tied with corporates who had shown interest to purchase farmer stock from farmers’ warehouse.
Finally, we were able to bring private and govt banks under one roof and started lending to the farmers with back to back purchase guarantee from corporates if loan defaults. We got tremendous response for farmers’ warehouse. Its win-win for all stakeholders. Farmers are storing their stock in scientific way at warehouse and get liquidity through WHR loan, financial institutes are lending to farmers, its Priority Sector Lending (PSL) and corporates are able to purchase from farmers, eliminating middlemen with good pricing. It became multi-location model in short time and has been implemented across the states with multiple banking institutes with asset under management (AUM) funding of ~1K crores. These are some events and journey is still continued to analyse rural supply chain and think for the farmers’ betterment with the simplest and implementable solutions.
Vishal Raskar, Head – Inventory & Logistics, Alpha Alternatives
Kimberly-Clark launched its sustainability 2030 vision, and it required a centralised and global platform to track, support, and manage the overall program. I, along with my team, designed and implemented a global platform to track the historical, current, and plans for 50+ Supply chain sustainability metrics from 10+ different sources. The platform helped the sustainability key users and leadership team to take data-driven action to achieve Kimberly-Clark’s sustainability 2030 vision.
As Global Business Architect Lead, I collected detailed requirements from users from all four regions across different sustainability areas and source systems and owned the detailed design and architecture of the entire product. Multiple tech stacks were evaluated, and we implemented the product using SAP ERP, HANA, Automation Anywhere bot, API, ETL, Tableau, etc., to build the final product.
Through this, we achieved real-time visibility of 50+ KPIs for carbon footprint, energy footprint, Plastic footprint, Forest and Fiber footprint, Social Impact, Water footprint, etc. We could visualise each KPI at global, regional, country, or mill levels and empowered sustainability users and the leadership team to plan future programs and take quick actions based on real-time metrics.
Supply chain sustainability users can track each KPI at the most granular level, and based on future predictions, the team can take action on the planned items for each factor. In case of any KPIs behind the target, quicker corrective actions were possible on each metric parameter, thereby helping Kimberly-Clark team stay on track to achieve its 2030 vision of sustainability.
In my current role with the Product & Engineering team with Google, I am working on integrating all the partners in the Alphabet Supply Chain ecosystem and implementing some of the latest industry practices and innovations for real-time and deeper collaboration with all our B2B supply chain partners and stakeholders.
Overhauling the entire process change efficiently, Tata Play was able to augment the supply chain successfully and leaving a successful trail for others to follow. Here’s the short account of our Exemplary Supply Chain company – Tata Play and the way they led the transition effectively…
WITH use of standard ERP system along with challenge of training resources frequently, Tata Play was faced with other challenges such as Low visibility of processes to all stakeholders; Difficult to configure approval matrices; Different systems for entire procurement process; and Difficult
to use UI/ UX for internal and external stakeholders.
Highlighting the challenges, Neha Gupta, Senior Manager, Tata Play Ltd., elaborated, “The largest tool for any procurement function is Source to Pay tool, which covers the entire organisation across the multiple functional teams, all regional offices and partners.” For the
implementation of new S2P tool, the company faced and resolved multiple challenges on these fronts:
Integration: The biggest challenge was to integrate the existing system with the new proposed tool. To go ahead with such integration of S2P tool with and a legacy ERP system (Tata Play
had to ensure a smooth transition and sustainable deployment with minimum failures in BAU).
Process Mapping: As the company has been using existing system for 10+ years, it had built in lot of customisations and mapping those customisations into the new tool was difficult considering the fact that process flow for S2P was very different than existing system.
Data Field Mapping: Due to difference in terminology, there was a challenge to have all the fields of our existing system, which were getting captured replicated in new system. This challenge got accentuated by the fact that any field change in the new tool would reflect across the entire customer base of platform provider.
Change Management: Launching a tool of such a scale has been challenging in many aspects as this change had an organisation-wide impact. The project was required to resolve multiple issues, guidance across the different functions, driving accountability and most importantly ensuring delight and efficiency as result.
Integration Approach – To start with the integration, “We first and foremost figured out the number of touchpoints and number of fields where both the systems would be interacting and
deciding on the process of interaction. This was a critical element as our S2P tool has a lot of new functionalities such as Special characters, exponential values which were not accepted at ERP end. Hence, we introduced a middleware layer which was not only pushing the data from one system to another but also validating the data,” added Neha Gupta.
Process Mapping: To overcome this challenge, “We started with Identification of mandatory fields required in SAP and mapping the same with Zycus fields by utilisation of existing fields and creation of custom fields which ensured that all the data which is mandatory in SAP gets captured in a correct fashion. We also created multiple master base in new tool to ensure correct data pick up and flow to ERP,” she stated.
Data Field Mapping: In a SAAS based S2P tool, fields are standard, and any modification leads to changes in the tool across the players. To overcome the challenge of mapping multiple data fields, the company found out the fields, which were not being utilised across any player and customised those to the organisation’s requirements.
Change Management: The team got a buy-in of key stakeholders by educating and creating awareness. “We deployed a dedicated project team for the effective roll-out of the project. We also imparted
specific need-based trainings to the stakeholders along with having a help desk for easy and quick resolution on challenges. Strategic communication was done from executive sponsors to entire organisation,” elaborated Neha Gupta.
As the roll-out of the modules happened for the entire organisation and across pan-India locations, the benefits of same have been 3-fold:
For SCM, as a procurement function, deliver better results on savings. The company was able to reduce turnaround time (TAT) from 43 days to 7 days by moving considerable amount of procurement to Catalogue. The new tool allowed to eliminate redundant approvals along with making it a highly transparent approval process. There is better analytics and insights on data available in system.
For users, the process has improved with a fairly simple to deal with UI / UX, and nomenclature. There is greater visibility on approvals and faster processing of their requests.
To our external partners, it acts as a single tool for transactions with Tata Play where they can register / update their organisation details, track the issued PO, participate in RFQ and e-bidding events, check and give inputs on performance evaluation through a single platform and single login ID.
THINK Gas has introduced global best practices in safety, processes, technology and customer relationship management in City Gas Distribution business and is committed to building a robust infrastructure to deliver natural gas to its customers. The company uses a unique, first of its kind Journey Management Application (JMA), which not only helps maintain records digitally but also the online status of various vehicle parameters. Here’s a snapshot of THINK Gas’ innovative service expanse…
THINK Gas has been set up as I Squared Capital’s Natural Gas and LNG platform in India and Asia.
Established in 2018, THINK Gas is a 4-year-old environmentally conscious company, which aims to benefit the country with the supply of natural gas to Domestic, Commercial, Industrial and Automotive (CNG) sectors. The company has seven licenses to operate city gas distribution networks in 13 districts in India, across the states of Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, altogether covering an area of 47,000 sqkms and a population of over 17 million.
Whilst CGD companies are building their core infrastructure over the earlier years of their development, a network of CNG Stations at OMC outlets is often set
up to create a CNG ecosystem and cater to the immediate demands of the market. Gas is transported to these stations by Mobile Cascade Vehicles (MCVs). The movement of these vehicles for supply of natural gas from the mother stations to the daughter stations involves high risk and challenges such as keeping an eye and recording of the logistic movement of vehicles, manual maintenance of logbooks, and dependency on driver’s discipline for recording trip time & odometer reading. Manual interventions include data processing and analysis using excel sheets, planning to improve efficiency by minimizing idling time and improved scheduling of vehicles.
THINK Gas wanted to have a robust supply chain management mechanism that would effectively help in the deployment of CNG cascade vehicles,
efficiently track demand patterns across different stations, determine traffic density on routes, analyse the waiting time for MCVs at the stations and also keep a check on driver’s discipline.
THINK Gas is the only city gas distribution company in India to develop and successfully implement an app and a web application - Journey Management Application (JMA), which not only helps maintain records digitally but also the online status of various vehicle parameters. A first of its kind, JMA supports English, Hindi, and other regional languages for easy comprehension, understanding and usage. The JMA is connected real-time with the company’s central control room – Nucleus that helps keep an eye on ground.
JMA allocates journey to drivers
through a system-based control mechanism, tracks MCVs efficiently and has helped THINK Gas in smooth logistics and meeting our customer demands efficiently:
• Digitisation of records and moving away from inconsistent manual record keeping
• Integration with SCADA for trips allocation against dynamic demand
• Regular online status of all MCVs for better planning and improved efficiency
• Tracking and recording of the distance travelled by the vehicle
• Filling, decanting and idling time of the vehicles at CNG stations/ OMC outlets
• Create different login IDs for drivers with PIN based authentications
• Installation of Front, Rear, and In-Cabin cameras for driver
authentications and to keep a check on drivers’ discipline
• Use of AI to identify need for break for a driver for proper sleep
With a vision to make the agri-supply chain demand-led, WayCool embarked on a journey to streamline farmers’ supply chain and developed a program, ‘Outgrow’. Through this innovation, the company has been able to reduce the wastage in the supply chain to less than 2%. A success story…
THE agri-supply chain, especially for fresh is supplyled as opposed to ideally being demand-led. The farmer has no visibility to what the demand will be and takes decisions based on gut, intuition and advice from other farmers on what to grow, when to grow and how much to grow. This leads to multiple issues in the supply chain such as supply issues, price volatility, wastage (India wastes 30% of the food produced). WayCool envisioned to solve this problem to flip the food value chain to a demand-led one. There were many challenges on the way such as working with farmers and incentivising them to produce based on this demand and moving the material from farm to fork.
WayCool realised early on that they had to work closely with both farmers at one end and retailers at the other to solve this problem. “We needed sufficient scale to get the required data for prediction and to incentivize the farmer to grow accordingly. We worked on scaling both
demand and supply while the major work was done in planning. We set up a program to work closely with farmers called ‘Outgrow’. We also operate a model farm where we practice what we preach,” elaborated Charish Puri, Head – Service Business, WayCool Foods & Products Pvt. Ltd. This helped develop trust with farmers. The company also developed technology to measure supply at the
farm level – a farm ERP.
On the demand side, the company introduced technology to help capture orders from customers. Tech tools such as machine learning and AI algorithms were deployed to help predict demand, which is passed back to farmers for growing and procurement.
As a result of this endeavour, the company is now able to service over
125000 customers with fill rates of >95%. They have been able to reduce the waste in the supply chain to less than 2%. More importantly, the process is fully automated and requires minimal human intervention, which means fewer errors, greater efficiency and effectiveness. Besides, the company has successfully implemented new age technology advancements to aid farmers in enhancing their reach to market.
WayCool does the distribution for multiple agri products such as staples. The company operated a small cross docking facility (3500 sqft.), which required about 8 people to move about 9.2 million units, which came pre-packed from a mother DC, which is then cross docked to thousands of retailers. These units had to be cross docked and involved manual labor to unload, allocate and then load the material onto a vehicle. Achieving desired efficiency was one of the biggest concerns and there were also
many errors since all the operations were manual. WayCool’s innovations team studied the operations and came up with a cross-dock decision conveyor system that was designed and made ready for operations in less than 2 months. Through this, the company can run the full operations of the cross-dock facility with just two people. In fact, the business has grown 2X with the conveyor system in place.
E-commerce has grown massively during the past couple of years and the growth was especially fast during the first two phases of the pandemic. Many of the large e-commerce companies are WayCool’s customers and buy packed fruits and vegetables from them. Packing is a laborious, time consuming process and multiple people handling the fruit and vegetables destroys its freshness. The company had less than 8 hours from receiving the produce to delivering
packed produce to the customer since the produce is perishable. Any delay would mean lost orders for customers and also produce that was not very fresh for end consumers. Since demand grew, it required a great deal of manpower during one shift. To reduce human intervention and increase the output exponentially (bring higher productivity and consistency of packaging), the innovations team started working on automating the packing process. They designed and built a vertical packing machine. This machine can auto-weigh and pack multiple SKUs with minimal human intervention. It can pack upto 17 packets per minute, which is 500% better in comparison to the same activity done by humans. The packing does not require human touch, thereby ensuring that the produce is fresh. It also uses a breathable laser perforated film, which keeps the produce fresh.
During one of the most challenging times, Moglix enabled Business Continuity through Agile Supply of Essential Goods at Scale. Here’s a snapshot of how the company achieved the daunting feat and received the distinction of being an exemplary supply chain company…
MOGLIX integrates technology-driven processes with its onsite supply chain capabilities to deliver 5 lakh+ SKUs of class C industrial goods for 500+ large-enterprise and 500,000+ MSME customers worldwide. In the period beginning from February 2020, the company faced the following challenges:
Lack of Comprehensive Knowledge on Prevention: The onset of the COVID19 pandemic was an unprecedented event. No enterprise, government, or consulting company had any case study to model economic and social behaviour accordingly. This skyrocketed the demand for PPE kits for frontline
workers, healthcare professionals, security professionals, economy workers serving essential product lines.
Supply Chain Disruption Due to Lockdowns: The lockdown in India and other countries led to a wholesale supply chain disruption. It created a scarcity in the supplies of packaging, safety goods, and MRO items.
Volatile Regulatory Framework and Shifts in Governance Model: As the pan-India lockdown gave way to localised lockdowns, governance models shifted gears towards local authorities. This meant divergence across geographies and localised thumb rules on personal mobility, logistics, social distancing, and business activity. There was a need to protect vulnerable communities across India’s deep-seated pockets with adequate supplies of safety goods and PPE kits.
Visibility into real-time analytics: India’s manufacturing supply chain has less than 2% exposure to technology. Stakeholders such as suppliers, regulatory agencies, quality assurance institutions, enterprise and MSME customers, and LSPs work in offline and siloed environments that create disconnected islands of data and impede information sharing. This could have translated into an adverse selection of PPE kits and essential goods and broken-down collaboration between suppliers, logistics service partners (LSPs), and packaging service providers.
Velocity of disruption: A manual workflow slows down supply chain processes. This could have translated into each stakeholder in the PPE supply chain following, instead of being ahead of or at least at par with the curve of the pandemic. Slow responses inevitably implied losses of lives and livelihoods.
Variety of Stakeholders: Stakeholders were spread across diverse regions that were subject to a wide variety of local and federal governance models and volatile health and business regulatory frameworks. Mapping the relevance of supply chain solutions for each stakeholder in the face of incremental information flow and fragmented regulatory responses is a challenge. Such fragmentation could have led to the suboptimal deployment of manual, financial, and material resources across the supply
chain.
Volume of Suppliers: Collaborating with a high-volume network of 18,000+ supplier calls for error-proof systems and processes.
The company’s approach to innovating for the challenge consisted of four distinct but connected components:
Awareness Creation: Moglix created a digital order-to-delivery platform. It reached out to enterprise and MSME buyers, government agencies, and NGOs who were searching for PPE kits of custom quality specifications and relevant suppliers with relevant capabilities to deliver the same from the single window point of contact. The company leveraged both our digital platforms and onsite supply chain networks to zero down the gaps between PPE kit buyers and suppliers. The company provided them with a one-stop digital ecosystem to centralise the supply chain journey.
Data Analytics: A PPE kit calculator was developed and deployed in the PPE orderto-delivery portal for buyers to quickly estimate the quantum of PPE kits that they may require. The PPE kit calculator had built-in artificial intelligence and smart algorithm capabilities to churn out prescriptive analytics and near realtime track and trace of orders, sourcing, and deliveries for buyers based on their inputs.
“Insights from the portal allowed us to quickly map the order size, port of destination, the local COVID19 spread in the destination against supplier capabilities, product costs, medically recommended quality standards, and regulatory requirements issued by local governments, the port of loading, and the local COVID19 spread in the sourcing region,” added Rahul Garg, CEO & Founder, Moglix. Based on the insights from the order-to-delivery portal, Moglix teams at its offices and warehouses collaborated to optimize the supply chain solutions pivoting on:
Multi-commodity: Bundling PPE kits, packaging, safety goods, coveralls, gloves, disinfectants, surface cleaners, etc., for cost-efficient full truckload (FTL) logistics capacity utilisation
Multi-zonal: Mapping critical paths for
covering multiple destinations in a single sortie of a vehicle
Multi-modal: Deploying multiple logistical capabilities to ensure delivery within the committed turnaround time
Multi-supplier: Identifying multiple suppliers for each district to enable assured sourcing
“We developed and deployed a digital order-to-delivery platform that enrolled all stakeholders into a single ecosystem and connected the fragmented data islands to a central data lake to augment real-time visibility into data. We used robotic process automation for PR-toPO processes, billing and invoicing, GST compliance, and inventory management at our warehouses to bring speed to our supply chain solutions.”
“We deployed a Central Taskforce to consolidate various platforms, processes, systems, and physical environments into a single digital supply chain green channel. We used data analytics from our home-grown Moglix Runners app to collect on-ground intelligence to stay updated on the evolving contours of the situation across geographies. These insights enabled us to map supplier capabilities and identify suppliers with the highest scale, lowest TAT, and access to multimodal logistics across the district, state, national, and global levels of the supply chain and create an efficient and Pareto optimized supply chain,” added Garg.
He further informed, “We leveraged clean data to map PPE kit specifications of each supplier’s SKUs against purchase orders and requests for non-commercial donations to minimize the risks of order-delivery mismatch and achieve a ‘Zero Defect Zero Effect’ (ZED) goal. Between February 2020 and December 2020, we delivered 5 million PPE kits to 220 customers across 520 plants and 230 cities in India and 53 countries worldwide.”
An innovative account of how Intugine enabled real-time multimodal supply chain visibility for an organisation with manufacturing facilities and customers across the globe with a single dashboard view of all their movements across modalities (road, ocean, rail, air, parcel)
One of Intugine's customers', having a manufacturing plant in Silvassa, India, had to ship their products globally to their counterparts or customers. While the actual transport was not an issue, trackability of the shipment from Silvassa to the closest port, from there onwards to the dock at the receivers' location and onwards again by road to the final destination, was the challenge.
This customer selected Intugine's realtime multimodal visibility solution, not just to track over-the-road movements. Intugine's solutions could now track shipments from the source to the port of loading, ocean tracking of the vessel that loaded the container, to the vehicle that took the container from the port of discharge to the customer's location. This is how their customer achieved an endto-end view of all shipments in transit through the same system.
Intugine's process was to enhance its network of carrier integrations with transporters, 3PLs, freight forwarders, and courier companies working with their client. Moreover, it also integrated with shipping lines, rail networks, and airlines to enhance multimodal visibility. "While we have an extensive network of existing integrations in place, cross-checking all
the partners working with our customer and who were part of our network was the first step. If certain partners were not integrated, we had to get in touch with them and connect our systems to get visibility of their movements," highlighted Ayush Agarwal, Co-founder & Chief Business Officer, Intugine.
Talking about the hurdles faced, Ayush highlighted, "The main implementation challenge was getting all the required integrations in place for cross-border 'road' visibility. This required us to considerably extend our already existing network of integrations, as the movements were not restricted to a particular region but could be anywhere in the world. We also had to integrate with the customer's TMS, which was a slightly long process as there were many dependencies. However, we were able to do the needful in the timeframe decided successfully."
Explaining the process in detail, he added, "Our methodology was to go step by step. We started with visibility of trips that could be tracked within the country just over the road and courier/ parcel visibility for the client. We then moved to tracking container movements between countries. Then we combined the container and over-the-road visibility and could offer multimodal cross-country visibility of ocean and
road movements. We then established our rail and air tracking capabilities and combined this with our ocean and road visibility product to offer a truly end-toend visibility solution that our customer very well received."
The customer could not just gain visibility across modalities but could also share real-time ETAs of shipments with their clients and eliminate all unnecessary follow-ups and communication with the transporter or aggregator, improving the efficiency of the logistics team. The deployed system could detect any delays or issues in transport. Hence, preventive action could be taken early, reducing losses due to delayed shipment.
The customer saw the following outcomes by using the Intugine solution:
w Real-time visibility of their shipments irrespective of the mode of transport used or country of origin, or destination
w End customers could also track their shipment and hence would know precisely when it is expected to arrive and could plan operations accordingly
w In case of any delays or disruptions, pre-set alerts get trigged so that the customer can take necessary action to avoid any interruption in the schedule
w Shorter revenue realisation cycles as customers could now recognise revenues precisely with accurate tracking of shipments which could help avoid financial losses
w In the case of inbound shipment tracking, the customer could plan manufacturing based on the visibility of whether raw material would arrive in time or not
w With greater visibility of shipments, teams could proactively track and ensure smooth movement of goods, reducing dwell time, detention charges, and demurrages associated with delayed deliveries.
China’s stringent policies during Covid left manufacturing high and dry globally. Indian manufacturers are integrating new technologies, throughout their operations to become agile, flexible, become cost competitive and responsive to customers in tune with the fast-changing global business dynamics. Our panel discussion, ‘Next Generation Value Chains’ hosted during Celerity Supply Chain Tribe Awards event, deep dived into Indian manufacturers’ strategies and stance to seize the opportunities and make India the next Manufacturing Hub of the world. Excerpts…
Akhil Srivastava, Director BU South Asia, AB InBev
Charish Puri, Head – Service Business, WayCool Foods & Products Pvt. Ltd.
Prakash Ramnath, VP & Head - Global Marketing, PandoCorp
Himanshu Maloo, Senior Supply Chain Leader, Udaan
Shailendra Bobhate, Sr Advisor, KPMG Assurance & Consulting
Vijay Shetty, VP - Supply Chain, Alkem
few years back, the famous adage, ‘Change is the only Constant’, used to hold true for all of us. But today, Change is also Changing so fast, even that hasn’t remained constant anymore. We have seen supply chains moving from one extreme to the other extreme, owing to fast-changing customers’ expectations, business needs and new age technology advancements. All these factors are transforming supply chain into a value chain for an organisation. A disruptive and distinctive supply chain is a true business enabler in today’s times. The onset of Covid-19 pandemic has even multiplied the importance of supply chain in driving a business’ success, which was not only the discussion point at the respective corporates’ boardroom but became the dining room conversations of every household. When everything was shut and everything was a chaos, the only thing that was running the world was supply chain,” with such a strong statement, the moderator of the session, Himanshu Maloo – Senior Supply Chain Leader, Udaan, steered the freewheeling conversation.
According to you, what holds
importance for the organisations – just to keep getting profits from the existing business models or do they still need to work towards innovations which may not be profitable from the word go?
Akhil Srivastava, Director BU South Asia, AB InBev: That’s a brilliant question. I would ask everyone in my team to make profit today itself so that we can fuel the new business model tomorrow. A classic case in point is ITC which has diversified into an assortment of products & services categories. They could do that on the back of a strong financial muscle which they were able to pump into newer business entities and grow from scratch. Yes, we need both. Let me deep dive into Innovation & Change because that’s very important in terms of business model. I would like to bring to you the analogy of the clock, which has two arms – one is for Change and other is for Innovation. Both arms need to run fast because the clock is moving forward, otherwise companies will not be able to disrupt the businesses. There will be passive inertia to change. But that’s to me is a whitewash. However, there are some companies such as Apple who just believe in constant innovation. Change needs to have three factors embedded into it –
Solve a real consumer-centric problem; Solve a problem which is scalable; and Solve it profitably, if not today but for the future.
How are companies keeping customers at the center while designing their next generation value chains?
Shailendra Bobhate, Sr Advisor, KPMG Assurance & Consulting: It’s no brainer that the customer has to be at the center. Before we are supply chain professionals, we are also customers ourselves. Companies who haven’t been able to be attuned to the changing customer demands have perished and Covid-19 pandemic has been a great witness to that. I am quite intrigued and inspired by the quote of a fellow panelists, ‘It’s not the corporates that compete, it’s their supply chains competing in the marketplace.’ Once your brand becomes commodity, your supply chain efficiency defines the future & fortune of the brand. In order to make this vision a reality, customer centricity is and will always remain the key. I would really like to emphasize on one very critical factor and that is accepting constant feedback from your customers and acting upon it. If companies fail to do so, they will not
only lose customers’ trust, but will lose the ultimate game.
Vijay Shetty, VP - Supply Chain, Alkem: The technology tools used to manage and optimize the supply chain have not changed significantly for decades, however in the new VUCA world, the scenario is consistently changing and during the pandemic, we saw many organizations leveraging technologies to their advantage. At Alkem Laboratories, for our Branded business, we developed a technological tool (portal) for our Distributors called “Alkem MarketPlace”, which enabled our 5000 plus distributors to order digitally. During the pandemic when India was under lockdown for more than 18 months, our Distributors had the flexibility to place Alkem orders using the internet.
On an average in a month, we receive over 1 lakh orders out of which, 65-70% orders are processed digitally through “Alkem MarketPlace” portal. Like other organisation, last week of the month, we typically book 50-60% of our sales. “Alkem MarketPlace” initiatives have significantly reduced efforts of order processing time for our Depot personal
and also improved speed of executions for every order at our dispatch location.
Alkem is currently embarking on the journey to Digitize the entire Order to Cash processes. We are constantly looking at building an agile solution for our business and distributors using technology capabilities like AI/ ML to optimise our process. “Alkem MarketPlace” Portal will continuously be upgraded from time to time, where our distributors could place order using WhatsApp solutions or we may integrate with their ERP systems. Once we integrate our TMS & WMS systems into the Alkem MarketPlace portal, our distributors will have complete status and visibility of their orders till it is reaches their destination. I truly believe that technology is shaping and helping supply chain professionals to lead the way.
Charish Puri, Head – Service Business, WayCool Foods & Products Pvt. Ltd.: I would like to draw your attention to the current national obsession of 10 minutes delivery. To understand this, let’s divide the supply chain into three parts. Talking about the front part of the value chain, the quick commerce companies are changing the consumers’ behavior with the expectation of promising 10 minutes
delivery. As a service provider to these companies, we have to ensure that their dark stores are always filled with the right quantity as per the desired shelf life. Fresh products have the shelf life of few hours unlike any other product. We have to ensure their fill rates are high and replenish them faster that they are always at the delivery points. When it comes to the middle of the value chain, at the operations level, these produce by their very nature start getting deteriorated because of the moisture loss when they out from the field. We have to deploy the required storage systems with an aim to deliver these products in the freshest possible condition with a commitment to take care of any potential fluctuations at the back end. This is exactly where the value chain is playing the role. At the back end, we are connecting directly with the farmers by reducing 7-10 intermediaries to ensure minimum touchpoints. In turn, this value chain is able to offer better visibility to farmers and even better realisation of their produce.
Prakash Ramnath, VP & Head - Global Marketing, PandoCorp: I would like to take a macro-perspective on the same. Today, businesses are leveraging the value chain to outgrow the market. Fundamentally, companies can expand
How are companies leveraging the technology to outgrow the competition?
their product portfolio and expand into new markets, or they can look at increasing the revenue per customer. Earlier, companies used to have related or an unrelated diversification, which used to be time consuming. Today, with acquisitions, it’s much faster. The other trend that we are witnessing is that both the forward and backward integration is still in place to build competency. Companies are working towards making value chain their core competency or a competitive advantage to serve multiple customer segments. The third trend that is mostly witnessed in the US and the European markets where most organisations are looking to move to an outsourced fulfilment model to achieve an end-to-end value chain. There is a clear trend where a lot of outsourced fulfilment services with technology are coming into place. Most companies are also realising that in a group company, multiple businesses are being run independently are embracing a Centre of Excellence model for different functions such as procurement, being like a shared services unit across multiple businesses where some capacity sharing can help drive companies effectively to out outgrowth the market.
What credentials and skillsets that you foresee our future supply chain leaders must have?
Akhil Srivastava: The biggest catalyst of change in supply chain is People. Today’s supply chain managers are the agents of change in terms of bringing people together. Supply chain today has become the business fulcrum with around 43 out 100 companies having the core competency in supply chain, which never used to be the case earlier. Some of the biggest global conglomerates are backed by exceptional supply chains. People within this domain need to be upskilled as we move ahead and we must always remember that low skills and higher challenges will lead to anxiety, while high skills and low challenge will lead to boredom. I am sure none of us would like to be in any of the situations. The last two years have given us the ample reasoning to get going and innovate to sustain the businesses for the long term. It was a resilient supply chain and people like us who made this amazing achievement
possible in the toughest times. Such confidence can only come when we are updated with the best-in-class solutions and bring that differentiating factor to drive efficient supply chains. We are like the sponge who need to absorb the shocks in the most subtle way. This analogy very well explains the importance of Learning, Relearning and Unlearning to drive businesses forward in good times and in bad. Moreover, the pace of learning also needs to be faster. The concept of instant gratification and understanding the consumer centricity is what supply chain leaders need to learn. I believe this is the last nugget missing for us. If we are able to do it, the channel is already there.
Shailendra Bobhate: The last 2.5 years were even more challenging for pharma and essential goods companies where despite the lockdown, they had to ensure consistent supplies of essential medicines. Those times really tested our abilities to get out of our comfort zones and survive because failure was not the option at all. Proactive thinking during such times really aids companies in taking some breakthrough decisions. Supply chain teams quickly got together and designed customer-centric supply chains. A supply chain professional lies right at the center point – between the corporates and the customers where both the parties have their peculiar requirements from us. On one hand, the corporates want profit from us, while on the other hand, the customer wants quality products at the lowest costs. A great supply chain professional really needs to know the balancing act and work towards ensuring win-win situation for both the parties. Supply chain professionals need to possess thorough understanding of finance. They need to have the right mindset to achieve the desired results, which can stem from proactive thinking. The next step is preparing ourselves for contingencies. Next gen supply chain leaders also need to have project management skills as we work on many projects all the time.
Vijay Shetty: Our Consumers’ preferences are constantly changing due
to the influence of digital sales channels. Today’s customers value instant access to information and high level of service. We have many examples from the e-commerce industry and some of the logistics startups on how consumers have benefited with their offerings.
From a B2B model perspective, there are ample of opportunities in supply chain to collaborate with our Customers, Suppliers and Service providers to automate human efforts using new innovative technologies. It is important for the Supply Chain Leader to have short and long terms roadmap on the next generation value chain and constantly keep challenging the status quo of the operations model considering the changes in the customers’ preferences.
New technologies will always help, provided you have a capable team to make the best use of the same. Significant benefits could be achieved with the next generation value chain for our stakeholders, provided we have supply chain leaders who are able to sail the boat in the right direction. They should be able to take difficult decisions during adverse scenarios. Supply chain professional should behave like an entrepreneur. Challenging the status quo is extremely important.
Charish Puri: If you look at the food industry, which is contributing close to 20% to the country’s GDP, 30% of the food gets wasted in the value chain every year, which is more than the consumption of any small country such as Brazil. Way Cool Foods is building a tech-enabled platform, which will analyse the demand patterns of food products. With the help of ML, we are able to better speculate the demand, which can be passed on to the farmers so that there is demandsupply balance, and we are able to reduce the wastage as much as possible. In all these, farmers are ultimately getting profitable, wastage gets reduced, the produce reaches the consumers on time. Technology is the solution to reach to the masses.
The culture, history, and traditions of Sri Lanka is rich. It is one of the world’s leading producers of handicrafts. Prior to the development of the industrial sector in Sri Lanka, the handicraft industry was considered a potential economic advantage for the country. This industry continues to play an important role in the development of the national economy; however, lack of visibility is hampering the potential opportunities that this industry holds. Concerted efforts on enhancing supply chain efficiency can greatly impact its future for the overall economic growth and employment uptick of Sri Lanka.
Dr Nirma Sadamali Jayawardena is an Assistant Professor in O P Jindal Global University, India. Her research interests include consumer psychology, consumer social cognition, digital video advertising, and experimental research.
Dr. Isuru Koswatte is an Assistant Professor at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) in the School of Business and Creative Industries. He also is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at NSBM Green University and a member of The Academy of International Business (AIB).
Professor Dewasiri N. Jayantha is a Professor in the Department of Accountancy and Finance, Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka. After serving 17 years in the industry, he joined academia, and is a pioneer in applying triangulation research approaches in the management discipline.
Dr. Charitha Harshani Perera is a Lecturer in Marketing at the Department of Marketing, Operations, and Systems at the Northumbria University, UK. She obtained her PhD in Business specializing in Marketing Communication with recognition for outstanding work from RMIT University.
CULTURAL and financial values have increased the importance of handicrafts in recent years. Both developed and developing countries can benefit from the smallscale industries including handicrafts. Sri Lankan handicrafts are as high in quality and volume as merchandised products and are a major source of freight earnings. To strengthen the
country's economy, handicrafts are being developed. Several types of Sri Lankan arts and crafts are renowned worldwide, in which the creation of handicrafts has a great impact on the domestic economy. Sri Lankan handicraft production has evolved from being a cultural tradition to a profitable enterprise, which has gained recognition both regionally and internationally. Handicrafts produced in
Sri Lanka include pottery, wood carvings, brassware and cutworks, lacquer works, batik, handloom textiles, mat weaving, reed and rush wares, and wooden masks. Pottery is one of the oldest handicrafts in Sri Lanka. The most popular and widely used items in Sri Lanka are kitchen utensils, pots & pans, terracotta figures, and pottery carved vases.
People have faced immense hardships
due to the onset of the pandemic. Handicrafts and all workers involved in the situation were also affected. Therefore, this industry required strong promotional vehicles, such as indexing. The handicraft index will provide a positive competition and will enhance the skill of artisans. Weavers need stateof-the-art facility centres at block level where they can access all the facilities such as wool processing and design development training. The promotion of handicrafts in targeted markets should be precise. Exchange fair involvement is frequently used to promote handicrafts, but this often results in pint-size retailers purchasing from regional dealers.
It is common for major importers, large retailers, and chain stores to visit the exporting country's producers' facilities prior to placing a sizable order; they sometimes order samples that they can show to their clients, which serves as a way for them to assess the prospective exporter's skills when handling an export shipment. Positioning the products in the market is crucial to successful handicraft marketing. Whenever possible, exporters, their intermediaries, and trade promotion officials should work to market the country's quality products to the upper end of the market (i.e. the high quality and price ranges).
Crafts from Sri Lanka are highly associated with the country's heritage and carry ethnic value. In the international market, Sri Lankan craftsmanship exports are relatively low because Sri Lankan artisans cannot compete on methods, equipment, and innovation with their competitors. To produce handicrafts, Sri Lankan handymen use decades-old infrastructure, which takes more time and is inefficient. When it comes to distribution and promotion, the woollen handicraft industry in rural areas has been able to open up new doors as a result of the increasing purchasing power of consumers, the growing number of households with two incomes, the introduction of new retail formats such as supermarkets, hybrid markets, and shopping malls, and the growing awareness of consumers of social and environmental issues, both domestically and internationally. Consequently, there is an immediate need to develop new markets beyond the limited local market.
To provide greater access to markets outside of the state, new distribution channels should be developed.
A supply chain is the network of individuals, organizations, resources, activities, and technology involved in the creation and sale of a product.
From delivery of source materials from the supplier to the manufacturer, to its eventual delivery to the end user, a supply chain encompasses everything.
Inventory: Manual inventory sheets
Outdated Technology: Handmade weaving machines
Information and Knowledge: Revitalization of traditional carpet making techniques
Inventory: An essential element of the supply chain is inventory management, which involves tracking inventory from manufacturers to warehouses and from these facilities to retail outlets. Many artisans come from poor backgrounds and faces the issues related insufficient resources they need to meet working capital and other requirements. For example, the maintenance of a manual inventory sheet is not a practice in several households.
Outdated technology: Many artisans from rural villages purchase low-quality raw materials, which reduces the quality of their products. As a result, they receive uncertain returns from the consumers.
A craftsman's earnings are less when compared to the amount of time and labour he or she invests. Despite the market's growing need for modern and contemporary designs, artisans still follow age-old traditional designs with the outdated technology, for example, handmade weaving machines.
Information and knowledge: A lack of market research, training, and skill development programs has forced artisans to continue weaving traditional designs. A lack of requisite quality raw materials further forces artisans to use whatever is available, regardless of quality. As a result, their production, quality, and costs are negatively affected which is an ultimate result of lack of information or knowledge. In the process of adapting new designs, technology is subjected to severe limitations due to knowledge-related constraints. There is a need for extension services when there is a lack of awareness of modern designs, technological advancements, etc. By revitalizing traditional carpet making techniques, weavers and their families should benefit from the extension strategy. Development of jobs for indigenous communities through training programs, creation, and marketing of products with new design applications, cultural outreach programs by developing collaborative exhibitions and publications, and preserving natural resources for handmade carpet production should be the highest priority. As part of the distribution process, NGOs, cooperatives, and other organizations working in the field of rural development and sustainable development should be included.
Brand building difficulties within the consumer value chain: It is recommended that a set of cooperation strategies is necessary to maintain and strengthen handicrafts, as well as providing a structure that makes management and market improvement strategies more effective to make handicrafts sustainable and competitive. Brand Building difficulties may be very helpful in preserving this important activity for humanity since artisans preserve culture and reveal the past characteristics of any locality. In addition to generating income and improving quality of life for the population, the maintenance of this profession has been
a key factor in maintaining traditions and preserving them for future generations.
The critical success factors can play a significant role in generating performance and competitiveness in sustainable contexts and human resources.
Knowledge in the areas of design and product development, technical knowledge, and market knowledge are necessary for the Handicrafts Industry to remain competitive in the global trade of Handicrafts. In contrast, the Sri Lankan Handicrafts Industry lacks market knowledge due to the lack of market research conducted in this field. Most of the handicraft organisations are not involved in marketing activities, nor do they pay much attention to research and development activities. The low level of education and decentralisation of handicraft weavers in rural areas result in a mismatch between production and market demand. Therefore, following strategies are recommended:
w Trade fairs and exhibitions: To bridge the gap between artisans and customers, both in terms of distance as well as perception, it is imperative to expand the scope of the market beyond the existing one, i.e. the local market. It can be beneficial to organise fairs and exhibitions in different cities and set up a website to bring artisans and customers together. For example, BMICH trade fairs and exhibitions in Colombo. Direct marketing as well as fairs and exhibitions are the main methods of disposal for the artisans' finished products, such as woollen handicrafts. While some artisans sell directly to consumers, others sell through intermediate
sellers and at local fairs and exhibitions.
w Global handicraft index: In general, handicrafts are sustainable products produced by hand or with simple tools that are selfmade by hand in the whole process by an artisan who uses natural resources. To improve the skill level of artisans and create positive competition, export, promote sustainability among populations and provide local jobs for artisans in rural and tribal communities of global levels, it has been necessary to conduct research to develop a global handicraft index that can enhance the skill level of artisans and generate positive competition and export opportunities.
w National level export strategy through women empowerment: Implementing specific work practices, such as a highperformance work system, can improve an organisation's performance. In the same way, high performance work systems facilitate an organisational climate in which employees are contended and willing to go the extra mile to achieve the organisation's goals. Most of the handicraft workers in our country and around the world are women. In order for the handicraft sector to flourish, women must be empowered. There is always a saying that women are responsible for all the good in the world. The same applies to handicrafts as well. Handicrafts and handlooms have been dominated by women for centuries. The backend is handled by them. With an expected 300 million artists worldwide, home-based artists are usually marginalised and one of the biggest associations of workers in this handicraft quarter. In Sri Lanka, the government has paid special attention to enhancing the social and economic status of war widows. As part of a genuine measure of government reconciliation, the civil administration should be fully transferred to civil structures.
Research has examined the impact of microcredit on women empowerment in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India. However, similar research has rarely been conducted in Sri Lanka regarding women empowerment and microfinance. As one of the major tools for economic development, microcredit plays a significant role in enhancing the living conditions of poor people, especially women in the country, thereby empowering their handicraft products for export. When Sri Lankan handicrafts attempt to enter the global market, it is important to deal with global forces cautiously. A modern firm must not only develop effective strategies to position itself in the market, but also lay the groundwork for implementing these strategies in a volatile corporate climate. A better understanding of global competition and adversary behaviour is critical to Sri Lanka's handicraft export strategy. Considering the importance of women's development to the country's development, the suggestions for women empowerment through microcredit will be helpful to policymakers and other institutions involved in the development of the country and contribute to a sound economic development.
The handicraft production does not alone serve the customer's purpose; therefore, there is a need to understand 'who is the customer', 'where he wants the product', and 'how much he will pay'. Consequently, to sustain in the fiercely competitive business environment, the industry needs to conduct a proper market survey periodically to gain a thorough understanding of the nature and extent of these aspects and practices. Moreover, current research gaps in different stages of the supply chain within the Handicraft Sector in Sri Lanka lack more attention to brand building within the consumer value chain with an emphasis on areas including, lack of trade fairs and exhibitions, development of a global handicraft index and national level export strategies through the empowerment of women.
