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“The airfreight segment is very challenging as we not only handle the temperature sensitive products, which is time sensitive too, but the social obligation of carrying lifesaving drugs is much more critical. Training the team to handle cold chain shipments is also a big challenge. Ensuring no shipments are offloaded at the last minute and if at all it happens, how to maintain the cold chain is very critical. One lesson learnt during this period was vaccines moving at subzero temperature, which need Dry Ice. As Dry ice is a hazardous cargo, it is not allowed beyond a certain weight in the aircraft. This is when we started looking at PCM (Phase Change Material) as coolant. The challenges are now almost worked upon, for which the opportunities ahead are tremendous. The cold chain industry is in focus now,” informs Mr. Nihar Parida, Senior Consultant, SpiceJet Ltd., during an exclusive interview…
How would you describe the last two years in the purview of supply chain? The pandemic has been the worst that could have happened and with many disruptions in supply chain. I feel myself lucky to be a part of a period, which taught us more about supply chain. We, in all our projections or risk managements, had never thought a disruption beyond may be a month. This pandemic taught us how things can change. Many other factors and geopolitical issues also changed the supply chain of the future. The biggest being, ‘Looking beyond China, it also gave a push for technology. I am happy that I became a part of AI and ML as a domain knowledge expert. The supply chain will be more resilient now and has pushed us to think beyond the box.
How has technology enhanced the operational efficiencies during these times with respect to supply chain? The biggest example of this is our e-commerce industry. It showed how technology helps during these situations. Otherwise, to tell the truth, the focus of our technology was postponement of manufacturing by reading the demand better. That has fallen flat. This pandemic showed us how tight roped inventory management laid to disaster in most of
40 CELERITY March - April 2022
the industry verticals. I agree many a company bore the loss for high inventory too. The best thing that happened due to technology during this period is, many things went online. GOI also looked at putting all stakeholders of supply chain under one platform.
As you are associated with SpiceJet, kindly share some inspiring insights that you have witnessed during the last couple of years in the context of support being offered by the airline industry in vaccine delivery. Using Airfreight is still a crime for lot of supply chain professionals due to the cost involved. But I had always been of the idea that if you take a holistic view of the cost and faster ROI, Airfreight is not that high. We saw how Airfreight saved many lives during the pandemic by moving the tests, consumables, and vaccines to reach the corners of the world. But at the same time, it was a worst hit industry during the pandemic. We used our passenger planes for cargo movement. We were the first ones to move into Cargo-on-Seat. We also leased wide body planes with seats taken off to use it as Preighters (Passenger+Freighter). Times when everyone was pondering what to do, we were working round the
Mr. Nihar Parida is a tenacious professional with strategic and analytic approach to innovating new ways, solving problems, bringing in customers and accomplishing profit targets. His expertise lies in identifying and capitalizing on emerging market trends, ideas, and revenue opportunities. His skills in key negotiations and strategic decision making have been perfected by 32 years of experience and 20 years of leading organizational business units. He envisions to help build Supply Chains with innovations to ensure it meets customer demands in the shortest possible time with help of Digitalization and AI.
