Supply Chain Fundamental Rethinking

Supply Chain practices in India, since the term Supply Chain was coined in 1980s', have been moulded, designed & bench-marked with the Western Supply Chain. Most of the Indian enterprises, be local or international, have evolved with the thinking process of the structure, underlying cultural needs & perspectives which have been predominantly "Non-Indigenous". Once in a life time of a country comes, what I call it as, its "Japanese moment". If grabbed then it leads to what Japan achieved post WW II to create a Global Best Practice which has been replicated for over six decades across the world using various "Names" but with similar framework. Japanese, post the trauma it went through in late 1940s & 1950's, developed a World Class Manufacturing framework, which not only made Japanese companies be World leaders but also has been a bench-mark for Worlds Class Manufacturing since then. India has its Japanese moment for Supply Chain (which i...

"The felt need" of Supply Chain agility has been much lesser than "the perceived need of agility". Covid-19 is a black swan event which has provided the context for "perceived need to meet the felt need". Indigenous Supply Chains have done a fantastic job with that.   My research (from the published data) gives a soothing perspective that Indigenous Supply Chains have exhibited agility of great sorts. I appreciate the Supply Chain agility on the below parameters, a. Capacity alterations - Indian Supply Chains have shifted the existing production line to produce a completely different product. e.g. In case of India's largest FMCG company, the plant which used to produce "Perfumes" before Covid-19, has transformed itself into producing "Hand Sanitizers". Assuming that flexibility in production technology being the basis for the shift also needs to be viewed in the context on the Supply side of the Supply Chain being able to "fee...

Supply Chains need data driven decision making. This has been the hypothesis basis which Supply Chain Intelligence has been the "core" area. Supply Chain Intelligence naturally can be enhanced through better Software application, Digitization initiatives & Organization process architecture which ensures improves MIS systems. Supply Chain data analytics is an evolving domain with a lot of Management focus. All the efforts are to improve Supply Chain "Intelligence". While there is nothing inappropriate in attempting to improve "Intelligence" the primary assumption is Supply Chain decisions can be an outcome of "Modeling" the data using "all the parameters" needed for decision making. Second, implied assumption also is that the Supply Chain Professional may lack the needed insight of the dynamic situation hence may not make the right decision. Situations like Covid-19 change this permanently. And till a new system of modeling is not ev...

An opportunity of a life time knocks only once in a life time! So when it knocks, making less than a dramatic use of the opportunity is a "Waste". Ones response to Covid-19 needs to be on those lines as a country or as an organization. Over the years, as opportunities for livelihood did rise in Urban areas, Rural population has come to Urban areas & settled down, in not so much of a great comfort but with some assurance of income. The demand on Urban infrastructure & the Supply Chain designs to meet that demand have kept increasing all the time. The World over and particularly in India, there has always been a talk about De-congesting the Urban area. In the pre-Covid-19 days this remained as an aspirational thought. There has been no great success with that thinking. The imbalances of Urban & Rural livelihood opportunities, which have been in favour of Urban, didn't create an ecosystem which makes a person leave the Urban land.  Covid-19 probably has offered t...

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 ...