Supply Chain Fundamental Rethinking

Amul is an exemplary example of a Milk business portfolio. The characteristic of that Supply Chain is predominantly standardized products, variety to a limited extent and more importantly, customers not being demanding about a personalized experience from the product consumption. Supply Chain is tuned to being a Push Supply Chain.   A Push Supply Chain Strategy is characterized by standardized SKUs made available in anticipation of demand. The strategy is deployed when the total lead time of Supply Chain is longer than the wait time available with the customer. Amul launched Pizza close to two decades back. Probably the total number of cities where Amul launched Amul Pizza (as a pilot) may have exceeded the total number of operational outlets that closest competitor may have had across the country.This was the scale of launch. Since then Pizza business has come to along way in India.  I have met so many people whom I ask this question - Do you know Amul sells Pizza? And ove...

Supply Chains have evolved with the "West" as an anchor. It probably has its roots in Supply Chain as a term being coined in the West. Also over the years, Supply Chain leading practices have emerged out of the West as well as the Supply Chain thought leadership has rested with the West. A mix of all these & many more things has led the Indian thinking of Supply Chain be overshadowed by the West. And that has been a very contrasting story till NOW. Indians by nature are heuristically driven & most of the Indian Supply Chain professionals that I have met over my career have exhibited that they can handle the "state of flux" much better. Rather Indian Supply Chain professionals have less liking towards deterministic way of working. Contrasting to that over the decades, all efforts have been to move towards "planning for enhanced flexibility, responsiveness & agility". This has been through practices of planning systems, adoption of technolo...

It has been all too much a need for Indian organisations to improve their practices,where the rate of change is unheard of for many organisations. A large conglomerate with a rich tradition of being around of three generations will find the need to be much more acute. And then comes a management mandate to undertake an large scale improvement project. So does the top management do! A large scale project with consultants, who are trained & have delivered projects (and to spice it up GLOBALLY) using world class improvement philosophies like BPR, Lean, Six Sigma or Theory of Constraints, gets rolled out & delivered to perfection with all the principles of the philosophy in the right spirit of the philosophy. Let me work you through one such example in India. The supply chain improvement solution needed the suppliers of the buying organisation to manage the inventory based on the pre-determined 'buffer' level to be maintained. The suppliers were given the target levels ...