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Supply Chain Planning has already gone through three cycles of evolution and the fourth is underway. The first one came with the deployments of ERP systems. ERP systems helped planners plan for capacities and materials using concepts like RCCP and MRP. Supply Chain Planning went through the second round of evolution with the onset of

Autonomous Supply Chain Planning has three fundamental layers. The first one is the sensory layer. This layer is the eyes and ears of the organization. It senses the disruptions in the ecosystem and transmits those disruptions to the organization. Typically, the Control Tower acts as the sensory layer. The second one is the intelligence layer.

On Mumbai’s marine drive, a peculiar sight catches the eye—a collection of four-legged concrete blocks positioned along the shoreline. These structures, known as Tetrapods, serve a vital purpose by breaking the force of the waves and dissipating their energy. Just as Tetrapods act as shock absorbers for shorelines, production lines require their own form of

COVID lockdowns impacted us like never before in our living memory. From a supply chain standpoint, it messed up the sales pattern, left a devastated trail of bad sales history and created pent up demand spikes that further added to the mess. These distorted sales will be the basis for forecasting in the near future

Joanna was a bright, experienced MBA from Stanford. She had recently joined one of the largest F100 FMCG companies and was extremely excited to be part of the Digital Supply Chain Transformation Project that the company had recently embarked on. As part of her new assignment, she was responsible for reducing the working capital held

In an era when working remotely has become the new normal, digitization of core supply chain functions have become necessary for the survival of an organization. From a perspective of ‘putting more people to manage and firefight’ that is prevalent in the industry, the focus is moving towards automation and digitization. Role of Logistics in

As the logistics head at Crazy Foods, Robert played a crucial role in the company’s impressive growth journey. From its humble beginnings from a 7-person startup to becoming a thriving F&B company with over 1600 employees and nationwide operations, Robert witnessed every milestone. Robert was known for his hands-on approach to work, always ready to

In no other times, were supply chain disruptions more evident and glaring than now. The ongoing pandemic created havoc on both local and global supply chains. Supply chain practitioners were desperate to get back to operational stability at the earliest because of which there were renewed interest in supply chain control towers. As part of

When talking about progress and modernization, businesses tend to have a short-sighted view, perhaps for a good reason. But when one considers progress of practices and events which date back to the earliest eras of civilization – such as cooking, sleep patterns or competition, would one say a lot has changed? It has indeed. In

In the ever-evolving world of supply chain technology, there are winners and losers, with outdated ideas left behind. A true winner is the one that brings value to its users, creating use cases that become viral sensations. Amidst this landscape, cloud deployment stands tall as one of the triumphant innovations. Gone are the days when

Steve loved reading. He loved books. During the early days of the internet, when e-books were downloadable free, it was like manna from heaven for Steve. He would spend sleepless nights crawling the internet in search of his beloved books. After spending countless nights like this he realized that he was just hoarding. In the

In today’s era of remote work, the digitization of core supply chain functions has become vital for the survival of organizations. Shifting away from the traditional approach of relying on manual labor, companies are embracing automation and digitization to streamline their operations. This article explores the transformative journey of a leading Home Fragrance and Incense

It’s not Rocinante’s fault. We know Rocinante was not an easy horse to go on around the rugged Spanish countryside to philosophize. If Don Quixote called off his journey, sent Sancho Panza home and gave up his wild aspirations because sitting on skinny Rocinante is super uncomfortable and awkward, the world would have been deprived

Over the last half century, Supply Chain Planning functions have evolved drastically. From basic concepts like MRP, Lean, ToC, to advance concepts like Network Optimization, IBP, CPFR and Adaptive Planning, planners have seen them all. The planning function evolved from planning in departmental silos to having an organization wide S&OP. In extended supply chains, concepts

With COVID-19 cases increasing exponentially even after 3 weeks of complete lockdown, prolonged lockdown is expected. In a country like India, where a majority of population depend on daily wages for survival, a complete shutdown for a prolonged period is not sustainable. Limited testing with densely populated areas will surface sporadic cases over a longer

Jonny was not little anymore. He was the owner of Fastrade, a short term trading company that mainly dealt in perishable goods like fruits and vegetables. In a short span of 10 years, he had grown the company to a USD 100 million topline. Although his net margins were wafer thin at 0.5% to 2%,

Athena, the amazing, loved mathematics. She was good with numbers. That’s why her friends fondly called her ‘The Amazing Athena’. Athena had recently joined a large FMCG company to head the finance function. She was very happy to have got this opportunity. The company had a big product portfolio, had a bunch of star products

Lean thinking etched the concept of ‘PULL’ in the mind of supply chain professionals which in-turn popularized the concept of sales based Replenishment Planning. Don’t try to forecast sales. Hold inventory for the replenishment lead time and just replenish what was sold. Sales are what actual customer pull is. Replenishment planning proposed to take out

Honest Abe was the Supply Chain head of an F&B company. He was hard working, sincere and capable. However after putting his best efforts, there were regular complaints of stock-outs from his Distributors. Despite the fact that his warehousing bills from his 3PLs have ballooned in the past couple of years and his inventory write-offs

Demand planning across an organization requires marshalling a wide range of data like historical sales data, promotions data and data for cause and effect analysis. In order to make the forecast realistic and practical, planners tweak the forecast numbers with their judgemental forecast. Most of this data resides in spreadsheets and therefore building a consensus

Most of the warehouses face issues in managing inbound and outbound logistics at their warehouses resulting in huge delays in operations. Problems like allocation of docks to inbound and outbound trucks, capacity constraints of docks, and material handling equipment, loading and unloading of trucks, scheduling trucks based on the demand and dock availability, material availability

A common problem for large process-based manufacturing organizations with geographically wide distribution is the need to rationalize the economy of scale in production with a large and complex supply chain network. There is a trade-off between the economy of scale achieved through increased production at a more distant site versus additional transportation costs involved. Most

Last-mile delivery is a complex business with low margins. Be it food, grocery distribution to doorsteps or parcel/courier delivery from hubs to doorsteps or daily replenishment of supermarkets from warehouses. These operations become more complicated if we consider time windows for delivery, truck size restrictions in some neighborhoods, driver shifts and break regulations, SLA, fixed

Excel is the preferred tool for most of the supply chain planners. This is because of the flexibility and ease of use that excels offers and planning being a very dynamic area, most of the planners don’t want to get confined to the limitations of the tool. Moreover, simple activities like data manipulation and data

Advanced Planning Systems (APS) score well above the ERP systems in the way those make the Supply Chain Planning processes automated, faster, responsive and cost-effective. Such APSs can be extremely costly and time-consuming. Some of the well-received APS are offered by SAP, Oracle, Manhattan, RedPrairie, Infor, and JDA Software. The CIOs are advised to muse

One of the favorite questions of Supply Chain interviewers for the ‘often-nervous’ interviewees is “How do you choose a forecasting method for an FMCG company or a Cement company?” Most interviewees babble about errors (calculated statistically assuming a stable universe!) and dashboards.

Shop floor operations are complex. Planning with variables like demand, various capacities, run rate, product mix, lead times, material constraints, etc. is not a very easy job. Throw in the element of human behavior and the complexity hits the roof. It is therefore extremely tough to do any type of root cause analysis for poor

Manufacturing companies often realize that the raw material or packing items stay unconsumed for several weeks. Such materials are ordered and inventoried after having borrowed money from banks and other sources, at rates of interest equivalent to 12-15 % per annum. Locked funds and the interest thus accrued due to unused inventories can have a