Supply Chain Fundamental Rethinking

Realigning the Supply Chains, ( http://blog.think-spark.com/2019/07/realigning-supply-chains.html ) first driver - Impact of Trade Wars - is a kind of long term, mostly irreversible and a relatively permanent event. Tariffs have a history of being implemented as a temporary affair but staying permanent. One reason for that is increased tariffs lead to increased revenue for the government. Governments factor that increased revenue in their income calculations. This is one of the reasons for Tariffs to get imposed as a temporary measure to distract something but stay relatively permanent. Evidence suggests that Trade War will have more than temporary impact on Supply Chains. My guess is that Supply Chain need to appreciate it holistically. A couple of impact areas that I see are,   a. Supply Chain Costs are set to rise due to Trade War. e.g. commodity costs are purely driven by Demand - Supply. A country which produces the highest quantity of steel is unable to consume...

Supply Chain leaders have reached the crossroad, much faster than expected! By the time, Supply Chains stabilized post the 2008 crises, it is time for a paradigm shift, again. There has been no time in the past which is so pressing for the need to "Realign the Supply Chains" as it stands now, particularly, if you are an India based Supply Chain.  My personal reading is that Realignment is not a jargon to be used but a reality to be embraced by the Supply Chain practitioners. "This time its different" will probably be a truth to be taken in your stride and not extend too much of "past" references into probable "future" Supply Chain. I see four reasons for the need to realign a) Impact of Trade Wars b) Impact of Indian Government Initiatives c) Surfacing of competition from unknown quarters d) Emerging technologies driving Supply Chain realignment In the recently held ET Edge Logistics & Supply Chain Summit, I spoke on Re...

For the past few months, there has been a consistent drop in Auto Sales across almost all leading companies. This has been true for all segments including Passenger vehicles, Commercial Vehicles and also Tractors. A lot if discussion in the media and experts is currently revolving around the slowdown in demand. Coupled with the GDP data, the hypothesis for the same seems to have some valid justification in the perspective of some people. My personal take here is drop is Auto sales is nothing to worry about in the medium to long term. India is passing through a transition phase in Automobile industry. My gut feel is; a) OEM to Dealer is the sales that is recorded. The drop in auto sales at the moment may have to do with aligning to BS VI which is to be rolled out effective 1st April 2020. There may be a possibility that the OEM's would keep lesser pipeline inventory of the old version. So the push from OEM to Dealer is less. This balancing of inventory naturally has...