Supply Chain Tribe by Celerity July - Aug 2021

SUPPLYCHAINTRIBE.COM July - August 2021 Volume 5 Issue 4 For private circulation only

WHAT WOMEN WANT @ WORKPLACE Nurturing a culture in which women have equal opportunities to achieve their potential over the long term

THE FOUR PILLARS OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Astute thoughts on the HOW, WHAT & WHY of Digital Transformation

Lockdown is Unlocking Value Dear Readers, The two most trending topics have been ‘the third wave’ and ‘unicorn club’. It just goes to show that not even a pandemic could stop those with a high-value idea and a clear implementation plan. Let us applaud the 15 Indian startups that entered the Unicorn Club in 2021. And a special mention to Moglix and Infra. Market. We hope to see more start-ups in the logistics technology space become Unicorns.

Many start-ups have come up in the Real-time transportation visibility platform space. Demand in the real-time transportation visibility market has continued to increase. Vendors in this space are continuing to evolve, with visibility solutions playing a larger role in the market, and real-time tracking of assets becoming more important. We have scheduled a webinar on this very topical subject in August. More information will be provided soon on our website under Events section.

I am particularly proud of this issue since we have two big stories. We were wondering if we could have two cover stories in a single issue. Experts in both these articles give some very practical insights on the topics, namely, ‘Gender Diversity’ and ‘Four Pillars of Digital Transformation’.

Nominations for the Celerity Chain Awards are still open. Let us celebrate talent by giving them the due recognition, motivation and encourage them to further break the barriers. Looking forward to shining examples of excellence this year too!

Go ahead, flip the pages and be inspired!

Charulata Bansal Publisher Charulata.bansal@celerityin.com www.supplychaintribe.com

Published by Charulata Bansal on behalf of Celerity India Marketing Services Edited by: Prerna Lodaya • e-mail: prerna.lodaya@celerityin.com Designed by: Lakshminarayanan G • e-mail: lakshdesign@gmail.com Printed by: Xposures, A 210, Byculla Service Industrial Estate, D K Cross Road, Byculla, Mumbai- 400027.

Logistics Partner: Blue Dart Express Limited

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CONTENTS 14 | BOARDROOM BYTES

WHAT WOMEN WANT @ WORKPLACE Celerity Supply Chain Tribe has been hosting webinars on topical subjects. We took up Gender Diversity even though it does not fall under a classical supply chain topic, but it is our endeavour to see more women in science, technology, operations, and engineering, what have been traditionally male dominated. This Cover Story not only leaves an inspirational footprint for women professionals at work but also talks to their male counterparts…

SUCCESS CAPSULE

According to Nikunj Desai, Head Global Supply Chain, ACG Group, “SCM is like what an Army is to its nation.”

25 | TESTING

28 | COVER STORY

The FOUR PILLARS of DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION — Improving the ODDS Our webinar on ‘Four Pillars Digital Model – Governance & Leadership, Process & Capabilities, People & Culture, and Technology & Innovation’ offered tremendous insights to attendees on the HOW, WHAT & WHY of Digital Transformation. Here is offering you astute thoughts of our expert panel who made this webinar a truly engaging affair…

UNDER-40 SUPER ACHIEVERS

INTERVIEW 6 | The

July - August 2021 Volume 5 Issue 4

the METTLE

“One must need to manage dynamic safety-stock calculations,” highlights Jaipal Singh, DGM – Commercial, Dr. Lal PathLabs Ltd.

13 | Challenges

the pandemic threw for Demand Planning Atul Barve, Director – Integrated Planning (B2C & B2B), Signify India, shares his crucial demand planning learnings & experiences gained during the pandemic.

36 | Supply

Chain Control Tower: Old Wine in New Bottle?

Sandeep Chatterjee, Associate Director – Technology Consulting, Deloitte, offers insights into the changing paradigms of supply chain control towers.

38 | OPINION

LOGISTICAL CHALLENGES & SOLUTIONS The current pandemic impact clearly shows that the long-awaited structural reforms to make logistics a formal, streamlined sector have become more necessary than ever, write Dr. K. Ganesh, and Ramanath KB, Consultants, India.

10 | FOCUS

Supply Chain Coordination GAMIFIED Dr. Abhishek Behl, faculty at OP Jindal Global University, presents an overview of how gamification has been used as a tool and a strategy to improve supply chain coordination.

Editor: Prerna Lodaya DISCLAIMER: This magazine is being published on the condition and understanding that the information, comments and views it contains are merely for guidance and reference and must not be taken as having the authority of, or being binding in any way on, the author, editors, publishers who do not take any responsibility whatsoever for any loss, damage or distress to any person on account of any action taken or not taken on the basis of this publication. Despite all the care taken, errors or omissions may have crept inadvertently into this publication. The publisher shall be obliged if any such error or omission is brought to her notice for possible correction in the next edition.

The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private/professional capacity and do not in any way represent the views of the publisher. All trademarks, products, pictures, copyrights, registered marks, patents, logos, holograms and names belong to the respective owners. The publication will entertain no claims on the above.

No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher. All disputes are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of competent courts and forums in Mumbai only.

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INTERVIEW

THE SUCCESS CAPSULE “The way India is developing as a Manufacturing Hub and being looked at as an alternate destination to our large neighbor, Supply Chain function has and will have to play a paramount role to make this happen. Importance of having a resilient and reliable supply chain function has been realized across the industries and governments across the globe,” asserts Nikunj Desai, Head Global Supply Chain, ACG Group.

Pharma companies deal with this constant battle of managing demandsupply chain balance. What are the challenges that come in your way in managing the same?

We are the world’s second largest capsules maker, pharma packing supplier as well as manufacturing diverse pharma machineries. Many of our products are used during manufacturing of Covid related drugs as well as many lifesaving drugs and nutraceuticals for boosting immunity. Keeping the supplies going at all the times, both outbound and inbound to cater to this global requirement is inevitable. Larger purpose of our organization is “Making the world Heathier Together”. We are committed to the same at all the times.

We have 14 global manufacturing locations with finished product supplies to 70+ countries and material sourcing from suppliers spread in 20+ counties across the globe right from East in Japan to West in the US. As a result, the Covid scenario affects the supply chain both in

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Nikunj Desai has over 20+ years of experience in handling end-to-end supply chain in diverse industry verticals including pharma & automotive.

To his credit, he has led Global Pharma Supply Chain during Pandemic and achieved business results. He has established Central Sourcing department from scratch at ACG & CEAT. Also, progressively he has integrated various other verticals like Sourcing, Procurement and Logistics under one umbrella of Supply Chain Management.

A Graduate in Production Engineering, he has done MBA (Finance) from NMIMS and is an IIM Calcutta alumnus in Supply Chain Management.

terms of demand and supply whenever any of the global pocket develops any concern. Demand/Supply Patterns have changed in terms of products adding to unpredictability. Adding to above challenge is the uncertainty in the shipping industry causing delays and cost escalations.

last few years and this trend is expected to continue. Besides, our organization is growing rapidly both organically and inorganically, hence we have to keep up to the pace with this momentum to meet the supply chain demands.

Talking specifically about supply chain complexities, these are some of the most challenging ones:  Supplier and company team members getting affected with Covid  Lockdowns at various locations in the globe  Port congestions and uncertainties in shipping industries  Changes in demand and supply patterns  Fluctuations in commodity prices and Foreign Exchange rates  Fuel Prices hike While there are myriad challenges, the pharmaceutical sector has been registering a very healthy growth since

a. During Pandemic which suddenly struck the world, we did not lose a single minute of production across all our global locations. b. Our supplies and vehicles were waiting outside the customer premises even before they could start their factories. c. Despite all the fluctuations in demand and supply, we could meet our customer expectations and OTDIF. d. We have set of global suppliers meticulously qualified by our quality team who feed us raw materials across the globe. e. We have proven to be a reliable

What are the USPs of ACG supply chain?

INTERVIEW partner to our customers in the difficult time, and this was ensured by having a reliable and resilient supply chain.

How do pharma companies manage such abrupt or sudden surge in demand of some medical products in the wake of a deadly disease outburst?

I can speak for myself and initiatives our organization has taken… We have instituted Scenario Management Strategy and Plan B. From last year, we developed few likely scenarios that could cause supply disruptions both inbound and outbound and have run simulations.

Also, if such scenario arises, what would be the template to handle the same. This has been made ready and shared across the board.

All the suppliers have been categorized into different zones. Plan B has been put in place for each critical supplier including stocks at different points in supply chain. Geographical derisking has been the focus area, which we have been working since last few years, which has paid us dividends now. We also monitor all our suppliers’ capacity almost on a weekly basis and check their manpower status and well-being continuously. We extend them all the support needed to keep them engaged in these difficult times.

There are constant reviews happening internally along with our supplier-partners to sense the situation and during these reviews, all the decisions on ramp-up and ramp-down on production/supplies are taken. We

are supporting all our supplier-partners and service-partners so that they are fighting fit in this pandemic. With all these measures, we are ready with the solutions to accept the challenges which our pharma customers could face, and we are available to support them as needed.

ACG boasts of an exceptionally big manufacturing set up and as big warehousing network. How do you ensure that the products reach every nook & corner of the country in the safest way?

We have Track and Trace system installed in all our vehicles and dispatches moving out of our premises. Because of which, we can monitor each vehicle real-time and keep a track on its location, temperature, etc. Software is configured such that we can also monitor speed of the vehicle and whether its engine is working or switched off. All our routes are geofenced.

Any deviation, in any of the above parameters would initiate an alert at our end as well as at the transporter’s end.

We have given access of this systems to our transporters who have installed 24x7 Control tower with escalation matrix.

All this helps in monitoring the goods and adhere to the Good Distribution Practices. We are further enhancing this system to incorporate some more new developments.

How is technology playing its part in efficient handling of goods during transit? Please enlighten us on the recent Blockchain innovation ACG has made?

ACG Inspection – one of the four

businesses of ACG Group – has introduced an advanced blockchain-based solution that meets and exceeds traceability and anti-counterfeiting requirements in the pharmaceutical supply chain. The company’s Brand Security Platform combines GS1 2D Data Matrix, smart contracts, geolocation identification and product biometrics tracking to ensure the whereabouts and contents of packaged medicines are tightly monitored through their entire supply chain journey from manufacturer to end user.

The comprehensive new system provides a seamless, uncompromisingly transparent experience to all stakeholders along the supply chain, simplifying the overall process through distributed ledger technology and single ownership.

It is designed to overcome several longstanding obstacles to advanced traceability, including the challenges of establishing single-owner data sets, and the prevalence of digitally broken supply chains stemming from, among other issues, struggles with GS1 universality, personnel error and new business models disrupting traditional procedures.

ACG Inspection’s solution has three primary components, each of which can be incorporated individually or bundled per customer needs. The customizable products also are scalable, amounting to geolocation solutions that can provide everything from basic data management to full-scale, supply chainwide transparency.

BLOCKCHAIN: With Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and smart contracts, all medicines and buyers, sellers,

ACG’s 5-point agenda to manage supply chain disruptions: ♦ Scenario Management Strategy ♦ Plan B for each strategy scenario ♦ Geographical De-risking ♦ Connected supply chain thru Track and Trace initiative ♦ Dependency on Analytics for faster decision making.

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INTERVIEW I always tell our team that SCM is like what an Army is to its nation. Some day you fight in desert, some days on land and some days in snow.

We must be available always on our toes like an Army is always ready to protect our nation’s turf and fight the new battles/challenges which we encounter. In general, I have a belief that if my team is successful, then I will be successful. My job is to make my people successful and create environment where they can thrive. In following this belief, I am sure they too feel motivated enough when they see this happen. logistics partners and manufacturers are registered to one network, making it impossible for outsiders to manipulate the supply chain at any point without detection.

INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT): All participants in the delivery chain can be connected to the network using any GS1compatible application, such as the ACG Inspection mobile application, the ACG Inspection web platform, or any other application integrated into the ACG Inspection platform. ACG Inspections Geo Location and product biometrics trackers tagged to the products always provide all the data required for monitoring the location information and biometrics of the package.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI): Participants can be alerted in real-time regarding any temperature breach if the temperature of the medicine/drug rises above or falls below the desired threshold level, Geo-Fencing breach, or any deviation in the route planning, enabling real-time decisions. If the steady stream of data determines unacceptable deviations, the corresponding package is automatically invalidated.

Combined, these elements lead to a supply chain setup with unsurpassed traceability and transparency. Upon obtaining a unique serial number, QR Code or datamatrix for each package, the manufacturer scans the codes to

8 CELERITY July - August 2021

initiate the track & trace process. From that point forward, the system’s trackers continuously monitor and transmit data concerning the package’s temperature, humidity and location and any other parameter that is configured. Data also is analyzed to ensure compliance with various domestic and/or international mandates.

Throughout, real-time data is available to platform users via a dashboard, a unified space for clear and easy access to pertinent information.

When the package eventually reaches the end user, the receiving party can validate the drug prior to purchase by scanning its code with a POS scanner. Once the final transaction occurs, relevant data is immutably stored in a digital ledger for reporting or recall purposes.

The new solution is part of ACGI’s VeriShield suite of services – which, in combination with its QualiShield portfolio, encompasses the full gamut of pharma serialization needs through turnkey compliance with current and pending track & trace mandates in countries across the globe. VeriShield offers serialization and aggregation solutions for cartons and bottles at the primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging levels. QualiShield is a complementary, extensive range of highaccuracy camera inspection solutions for pharma doses, labels, and cartons to help pharma companies consistently deliver best-possible products.

How is the cold chain scenario shaping up in the country, more so in tune with the life-saving drug delivery?

Currently this is in a developing stage in our country. However, this will catch up fast and take appropriate shape given the scenario of vaccine delivery, which is imperative looking at the Covid scenario.

However, the challenges lie in the last mile delivery (especially in rural/remote areas) and ensuring the temperature monitoring and consistency throughout the chain.

What are the safety and security concerns that need attention and how can they be addressed?

As mentioned above, the challenges lie in storage, transportation and especially the last mile delivery and ensuring the temperature monitoring and consistency throughout the chain.

There are technologies available to monitor the same. Conventional supply chains are linear, where the information is available in separate batches/clusters residing separately, not allowing the supply chain participants to inform each other in real-time. This discrete progression (design, plan, source, make, and deliver) of the Supply Chain leads to increased transaction costs, latency issues, cascading of inefficiencies, loss of products, counterfeiting and delayed Action-Reaction process. Digitally broken supply chains deprive organizations of gaining any insights into the customer demand patterns and risks in the supply chain.

Our new solution of ACG Inspection, would help the manufacturers to transform their conventional supply chains into agile, dynamic, and interconnected ones, that would enable a seamless flow of information, make the supply network flexible to accommodate ecosystem partners ultimately helping them build predictive and secure networks.

ACG Inspection envisions to secure end-to-end global supply chains. This enables manufacturers to make digitally interconnected supply chains an integral part of their business strategy.

At larger level, Track & Trace system and Serialization in pharma supply chain from Primary, Secondary and Tertiary

INTERVIEW level is what needs to be introduced to ensure the safety concerns. Product level temperature sensing labels are also being widely used today. Apart from that, control tower to monitor the transportation is needed till the last mile level.

As a young leader, how do you motivate your team members? What is your success mantra?

We continuously meet/review and address various challenges of team members whether professional or personal. Every last Friday of the month, we have an hour-long meeting just for general discussion and fun, where we celebrate birthdays, achievements, and just have general conversation. Everyone’s safety is paramount, and we have restricted their travel as much as possible. Even for travelling, we insist that everyone travels in own/single vehicle and not a shared vehicle even if going to the same destination.

Personal support to team members whenever they have fallen sick or any of

their family members needed medicine or hospital beds. We always had their back in times of need. Also, our able HR/Admin team supported in enabling this. During Pandemic, I kept everyone charged with a motto that we are serving the pharma sector whose services are most important today. Let us do our best so that we can help the medicines reach the patients. You never know which of your actions saved how many lives. These lines connected every team member including our suppliers and service providers. Even drivers of trucks could relate to this request. Everyone had a larger purpose to operate and strive for doing their best.

I always tell our team that SCM is like what an Army is to its nation. Some day you fight in desert, some days on land and some days in snow. We must be always on our toes like an Army is always ready to protect our nation’s turf and fight the new battles/challenges which we encounter. In general, I have a belief that if my team is successful, then I will be successful. My job is to make my people

successful and create environment where they can thrive. In following this belief, I am sure they too feel motivated enough when they see this happen.

Where do you see supply chain playing its part in shaping up and strengthening Indian economy for the next decade?

The way India is developing as a Manufacturing Hub and being looked at as an alternate destination to our large neighbor, Supply Chain function has and will have to play a paramount role to make this happen. Importance of having a resilient and reliable supply chain function has been realized across the industries and governments across the globe. Thanks to PLI schemes being launched by the government and realization of the geographical de-risking aspects by all global players, as India leverages this scenario to leap ahead into playing a larger role and becoming a global manufacturing hub, then definitely that dream will be built only with the supply chain function doing the heavy lifting.

INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS SEE HIGHEST INCREASE IN THE USE OF AI DURING THE PANDEMIC The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of advanced analytics and AI around the world. According to a report launched by PwC India titled, ‘AI: An opportunity amidst a crisis’, India noted the highest increase in the use of AI as compared to major economies (the US, UK and Japan), with over 70% Indian enterprises having implemented AI in some form in one or more functional areas compared to around 62% last year. Travel and hospitality (89%) has taken the lead in AI adoption, followed by TMT (86%), financial services (82%), and healthcare and pharma (73%).

PwC India’s survey findings also show that optimism with regard to AI has gone up significantly from 72% to 92%, and 45% of Indian organizations have increased the use of AI post Covid-19. Further, 94% of the respondents claim they have either implemented or are planning to implement AI in their organizations.

Commenting on the study, Sudipta Ghosh, Partner

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and Leader- Data and Analytics, PwC India said, “The far-reaching consequences of the global pandemic have driven organisations to balance the competing priorities of safeguarding health and ensuring business continuity.

AI is now regarded as a key enabler for organisations to repair (emerge from the present crisis), rethink (plan for transformation) and reconfigure (make fundamental changes to the operating model for lasting competitive advantage). To get the best out of AI, businesses need to start viewing it as a necessity rather than luxury and weave it into the fabric of the enterprise. In developing countries like ours, improving demand may be a potentially more relevant benefit than savings through automation. Hence, given the availability of a large pool of skilled resources, AI efforts need to be directed towards complementing human capabilities and helping businesses prepare for the future,” he added.

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FOCUS

Supply Chain Coordination

GAMIFIED Supply chain’s importance has become evident during these unprecedented times. Therefore, firms need to invest in sustainable technologies & strategies that could be applied to a broader workforce. Gamification is one such way. Dr. Abhishek Behl, Faculty, OP Jindal Global University, through this article, presents an overview of how gamification has been used as a tool and a strategy to improve supply chain coordination. Unlike other complex technologies, gamification is easy to implement and has proved to have longevity. Thus, it is critical to implement game-based solutions to supply chain organizations that will help them improve their performance and help them stay connected.

C

OORDINATION is a critical piece in supply chain management. The nature and complexity of the supply chain network often make it difficult for firms to practice and improve coordination.

Supply chain coordination helps firms to improve their operational performance.

Supply chain performance still uses traditional approaches that rely on operations management fundamentals.

The most common approach in supply chain coordination uses a problem characteristics approach. However, with the growing complexity in humancomputer interaction, firms have heavily relied on tasks' mechanization. The steady rate of development in technology in business operations has transformed business operations using industry 4.0 applications. The 4th industrial revolution has also helped supply chain operations get automated, which has helped improve efficiency.

Along similar lines, blockchain has also

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gained prominence in the supply chain space. It helps to improve transparency and trust among stakeholders. On the flip side, many firms hesitate to invest in blockchain and similar technologies for several reasons: lack of funds, lack of learning, and handling the complexity of data to extract meaningful information.

The growing reliance on technology makes firms empowered on the one hand and makes employees crippled on the other hand. While digitization is reaching the forefront of every supply chain process and is actively being used to improve productivity, coordination among various stakeholders involved in SCM is highly affected. Some wellestablished strategies to improve coordination include quantifying the bullwhip effect, improving dialogic communication, using technology, and devotion of resources.

Recent studies and evidence-based research have also shown that firms have invested in tech-based resources like

Dr. Abhishek Behl is an expert in gamification and is currently a faculty at O P Jindal Global University. He has earned his second Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

He holds rich experience in teaching, research, and consultancy. He has also served as a Senior Manager- Research at Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship, IIM Ahmedabad.

His research is in business analytics and decision sciences with a focus on gamification, stakeholder engagement, sustainability, and e-commerce startups. He has won several awards and grants at the national and international level in gamification. He is also a director of “Gamification4all.com” which is designed to spread awareness about gamification and bridge the gap between theory and practice.

cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics to improve coordination. However, most of these technologies are complex and often give an advantage to large-scale firms.

It leaves us with an important question: How can supply chain coordination be developed organically for supply chain firms? How can the process of supply chain coordination be made sustainable?

The answer to these questions lies in offering solutions that can be used, practiced, and implemented across all supply chain management levels. We propose to address these concerns using gamification as an approach.

GAMIFICATION: AN OVERVIEW AND APPLICATION IN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT Gamification is defined as ‘the use of game design elements in a non-game context’.

Games have always been a source of entertainment, and it is a general belief

FOCUS that it draws the participants' attention and even spectators. Organizations often use game elements in marketing, health and wellness, human resource management, education, user engagement, and e-commerce platforms.

Some of the critical components of gamification include game designer, game design elements, online platform, and end-user. As game design elements and gamification are centered around understanding the end user's behaviour, selecting, and deploying the suitable game elements is crucial. For example, the most used game elements like points, leader boards, badges, spin wheels, and mystery boxes often give positive and favourable results. However, there are a lot of studies that differ from this approach.

The use of gamification as a tool and strategy has also started to gain prominence in supply chain management and operations. Some classical logistics and supply chain industry cases have experimented with gamification and have reached significant positive results.

For example, the famous coffee brand Starbucks improved their profit margins and delivery efficiency to distribute disposable items to their stores. While the company could match the demand for coffee to the stores, they were still facing issues concerning the last-minute orders placed for ancillary items. This, in turn, costed the firm, heavy logistics cost to meet the immediate demand raised by the store. Starbucks eventually gamified their data center, and each member of the supply chain was awarded positive or

negative points to place and fulfil orders.

The data was also made publicly available to all the supply chain stakeholders, which helped improve the organization and collaboration between them. The use of game elements acted as a medium to improve transparency and behavioural pivots of the supply chain members.

Another example of gamified supply chain management is training the staff of Audi, one of the world’s renowned car brands. One of the critical pieces behind the success of Audi is its customer support.

Drawing on the simplest form of a supply chain where firms and customers lie on two ends of the supply chain, every firm needs to avoid losses in the path. The firm designed a virtual training program that captures the mood of the customer.

The customers' responses are captured on the mood barometer that helps the salesman become wiser and empowered to deal with customers better. It helped them to engage the customers better over time, which in turn helped grow their sales.

While the above examples use various game elements embedded in the existing supply chain system, there are some examples wherein gamification is used as an external tool in supply chain management. For example, SCM Global is an exciting simulation-based game designed on the job roles of a supply chain analyst. The simulation uses Google Maps supported map wherein the players can drag and drop factories, warehouses, distribution centers and connect them via rail, road, or air routes.

The game simulates the demand and

supply and allows the supply chain analyst to learn ways to meet the two.

Various organizations have successfully used the game to teach their supply chain workforce to visualize the actual situation while keeping them engaged in an almost real-time situation. The game also uses hints, feedback, and dashboards to show the performance of the player. Thus, gamification can be successfully used to improve enterprise resource planning.

GAMIFIED SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT: A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH Gamification is often misunderstood and misinterpreted with games or game theory. This confusion often makes the task more challenging for firms as they feel that launching a game or embedding a game in their workflow would deviate their workforce. However, gamification as a process is far different from this.

Gamification can be plugged into almost every aspect of the supply chain process: managing demand and supply of raw material, manufacturing, warehousing, retailing, and reaching it to the customer.

Some of the crucial steps that should be considered before deciding and while implementing gamified solutions are: 1. Deciding whether to gamify or not?

As it is said, “necessity is the mother of all inventions.” First, it is essential to decide the need to gamify certain aspects of the supply chain— identifying areas where supply chain operations are hampered

The famous coffee brand Starbucks improved their profit margins and delivery efficiency to distribute disposable items to their stores. While the company could match the demand for coffee to the stores, they were still facing issues concerning the last-minute orders placed for ancillary items, leading to huge logistics costs. Starbucks eventually gamified their data center, and each member of the supply chain was awarded positive or negative points to place and fulfill orders. The data was also made publicly available to all the supply chain stakeholders, which helped improve the organization and collaboration between them. The use of game elements acted as a medium to improve transparency and behavioural pivots of the supply chain members. supplychaintribe.com

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FOCUS SCM Global is an exciting simulation-based game designed on the job roles of a supply chain analyst. The simulation uses Google Maps supported map wherein the players can drag and drop factories, warehouses, distribution centers, and connect them via rail, road, or air routes. The game simulates the demand & supply and allows the supply chain analyst to learn ways to meet the two. Various organizations have successfully used the game to teach their supply chain workforce to visualize the actual situation while keeping them engaged in an almost real-time situation. The game also uses hints, feedback, and dashboards to show the performance of the player. Thus, gamification can be successfully used to improve enterprise resource planning.

because of a lack of collaboration and coordination between various stakeholders. Gamification is one of the ways that can be used to mend the bridge; however, selection of the proper game element is critical.

2. Selection of appropriate game element Once the firm is sure that there is an intent to implement gamification in one or more supply chain processes, it is critical to select the right game element. The choice of game elements is often made based on popularity, visibility, ease of implementation, and choice of poor or inexperienced game designers. The selection of game elements should ideally depend upon the supply chain process and stage.

Supply chain managers should also assess the behavior and psychology of the people involved at every stage and select the game elements accordingly. The digitization of the supply chain process further makes it easier to test and implement game elements appropriately.

3.

Degree and duration of implementation of game elements Once the game elements are decided, supply chain managers need to answer two critical questions: To what extent do they want to gamify the process? And, till when do they want to gamify it? For example, in a B2B2C supply chain, it is vital to integrate inventory and services offered by multiple businesses.

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Gamification can be used as a tool for onboarding businesses on a B2B2C platform in an engaging way.

Similarly, such businesses can also use game-based elements to capture the customers' attention to avail their product or services by offering them discounts, deals and making the customer lifecycle engaging.

4. Understanding critical metrics of improvement Many firms often invest in gamifying their processes and lack understanding of key parameters that might get affected because of introducing game elements. Every stage in supply chain management involves different people with different skillsets and critical performance indicators. Thus, supply chain firms must use frameworks like Octalysis and see whether the firm is more inclined towards white or black hat gamification. As white hat gamification tools would help supply chain processes and professionals empower, work on epic meaning and accomplishment of tasks, the negative side gamification would base upon concepts like scarcity, avoidance, and unpredictability. Thus, to achieve high coordination, firms reward people who initiate and steer process and involve peers, which indirectly resembles the characteristics of white hat gamification. On the contrary, some functions of SCM also involve dealing with people and situations that are unpredictable, which can

be handled well using black hat gamification. As every process has some key indicators that measure and indicate its success, firms must map those with the correct game elements to achieve higher efficiency.

5. Revisiting and Revising Most of the supply chain processes are dynamic. However, most of the strategies adopted by supply chain firms are static. The gap between the nature of the process and strategy is often flagged in the literature on supply chain coordination.

Gamification is also one such strategy that is often used as a static resource.

However, it defeats its underlying nature, which is engagement and motivation. To maintain and improve coordination, the level of motivation and engagement must be maintained in the supply chain process. It can be achieved in two ways. First, using a variety of game elements in the same process. Second, changing the position of the game element in the process. The nature of the supply chain process would decide the choice between the two options.

UNDER-40 SUPER ACHIEVERS

Challenges the pandemic threw for

Demand Planning The Covid-19 pandemic had brought with itself a great ordeal for the supply chain community. Though the phenomenon caught us unaware, the inherent resilient nature of the supply chain fraternity turned the tide in its favour in no time. This is the POWER of being agile & adaptive and the pandemic has taught us this the hard way. Atul Barve, Director – Integrated Planning (B2C & B2B), Signify India (formerly known as Philips Lighting), through this article, shares his crucial demand planning learnings & experiences gained during the pandemic…

S

UPPLY chain professionals across the globe are challenged since Dec 2019 due to unprecedented and completely unpredictable phenomenon called COVID-19. From supply perspective, in Indian electrical & electronics industry, it started in the beginning of 2020 with component shortages due to dependency on suppliers outside India. Many companies struggled to manage continuity due to this unforeseen challenge. The wheels on the shopfloor stopped whirling.

Factories went for unplanned closures.

Huge backlog of orders got piled up at component suppliers resulting in shortages and stoppages of production for many of the companies for few months. The slowdown of production in semiconductor industry in H1-2020 and then sudden demand surge in electronics goods created huge demand supply gap, which is likely to continue for longer period. While we had concerns in supplies, demand pattern in India has seen huge transformation.

Let us take a closer look at it…

DEMAND SHIFT IN INDIA MARKET From India Market perspective, the scenario changed from last week of March 2020 with the initiation of complete lockdown. It posed a challenge for all demand planning professionals to change their conventional way of working and adapt new reality. Here is

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my take on this shift…  Shifting of demand due to temporary change in demographical pattern: huge number of migrant labour going back to their villages shifted some demand of FMCG products from Urban to Rural.  Change in demands of customers: Due to work from home and study from home concepts, many of the bread winning members of home and students were forced to stay at home.

It gave a huge boost to industries like Electronics Goods, Furniture, UPS, etc. Even in Lighting Industry, we observed huge spike in demand of specific category of lamps like emergency lamps in rural areas and desk lamps in semi urban areas.  Online sales saw a huge spike whereas Modern retail sales went down.  Due to fear psychology, there was a spike in bulk buying and big pack shopping across the product lines.

What this demand shift meant for demand planners?

This VUCA scenario threw a great challenge and opportunity for demand planning community, specifically for electronics industry where on one side there were challenges in the back end for supplies and on other side sudden shift in demand. The conventional historic averages, statistical forecasting based on past data or inside out sales plan took a back seat. Demand planners were pushed

Atul Barve has a distinguished career spanning over 18 years in Supply Chain Domain with corporates like Marico, GE, and Philips. He has worked in leadership role in almost all facades of supply chain including vendor management, planning, order management, network optimization and logistics. He has done PGD in Supply Chain from Symbiosis Institute of International Business.

to look at new parameters. They were pushed to gather more recent data points on ground. ♦ Quick transition from use of historic sales data to futuristic and actionable outlook for demand planning ♦ Shift from demand forecasting from state level to district/zone level ♦ Demand planning based on prediction of possible Covid 19 impact on 741 districts in India ♦ Analyzing trends of lockdown pattern in various market ♦ Shifting demography due to pandemic and hence shift of demand plans accordingly. For ex. Higher sales of low-ticket items in the districts where labour population is migrated for short term duration ♦ Temporary shift of demand fencing (firm demand plan) from months to weeks for factories or supplier to ensure optimum working capital in overall supply chain.

So key is to remain adaptive and agile. This pandemic has taught us a lot… going out of the bookish knowledge or conventional planning methods (which worked well earlier) to inventing and adapting new ways of working.

I am sure nobody wants any further wave to come but if at all it happens, demand planning community is well prepared now to handle these uncertainties.

Take care. Stay Safe. Keep Learning and sharing.

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WHAT WOMEN WANT at the

Workplace

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Celerity Supply Chain Tribe has been hosting webinars on topical subjects. We took up Gender Diversity even though it does not fall under a classical supply chain topic, but it is our endeavor to see more women in science, technology, operations, and engineering, what have been traditionally male dominated. While commitment to gender diversity has increased significantly, progress remains slow. The pandemic too has intensified challenges that women already faced. If companies make significant investments in building a more flexible and empathetic workplace, they can nurture a culture in which women have equal opportunity to achieve their potential over the long term. This Cover Story not only leaves an inspirational footprint for women professionals at work but also talks to their male counterparts…

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Sanjay Desai, Co-founder and Regional Director, Humana International, Singapore “Companies with top 25% (gender diversity) on their executive team were 21% more likely to experience above-average profitability than companies in the bottom 25%.”

What is Gender Diversity and why it is important to an organization?

Gender Diversity refers to an equal ratio of men and women working in an enterprise / function or an industry type.

Whilst most of us agree that to have a fair and productive working environment, an equal balance of men and women is required, more commonly than not, this is not the case despite the modern age that we live in. Gender diversity at workplace means men and women are

hired at a similar and consistent rate, are paid equally, and are given the same working environment, opportunities and level playing field.

Why it is important? Diverse workforces have been proven to outperform ones that are not. It can increase profitability as a company and decrease staff turnover. Companies with top 25% (gender diversity) on their executive team were 21% more likely to

Chart 1: No. of years to close the economic gender gap As of 2020, it will take 257 years 300

200 100

0

170

2016

217

202

2017

2018

257

2020

Source: WEF BofA GLOBAL RESEARCH

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experience above-average profitability than companies in the bottom 25%.

During March 2021, Bank of America (BoFA) published a report that full gender equality could increase World GDP up to $28 Trillion by 2025. The study shows a chart which is very shocking.

What this chart says is, at today's rate, it will take 257 years until men and women get paid the same rate for the same work universally. We all know that sometimes statistics can look unreal.

However, it does tell a tale.

Organizations who work to increase the gender balance in their organizations / leadership structure will surely expect to benefit from these: • Improved financial performance • Reduced risk • More challenging and robust decision making • Increase in the attraction to a wider talent pool • A general feeling of collaboration and trust within the organization.

Is there a syndrome called “Occupational Segregation” and as a reason, we do not have enough pipeline of female leaders to progress to the top?

BOARDROOM BYTES Yes, we can say that although it is not so simple & easy to put a % value as an outcome, it is true that female professionals are relatively less attracted at entry level jobs in some sectors like Industrial & engineering manufacturing, warehousing & transportation, military & defence. It naturally leads to an empty pipeline of female leaders, and as a result, there is less female participation at the top. There is also a growing notion that Staff, and Line Roles progression may impede the path to senior leadership.

It is generally felt that female leaders do not take the roles that lead to the C-level positions. However, most male hold line roles, which eventually lead to the C-level positions. The line roles that male hold are closer to the core operations of the company, which indirectly prepares them for the top positions. There is another theory, which subtly supports this view (about occupational segregation) and that is... men view leadership as an outcome of transactions, hence are more autocratic and direct, hence prone to take decisions quicker whereas women tend to be democratic and participative in their management style, which may sometimes delay the decisions. Despite all what we say, there are exceptions to these, and we have exceptional female representation at the senior leadership levels in many organizations globally.

Making gender diversity a business priority can lead to financial benefits and help company realize its full potential.

What are the actual benefits that an organization can reap by increasing Gender Diversity at workplace?

Any organization that wants to improve its productivity levels should consider appointing an equal number of men and women at their workplaces. It involves having the right mix or equal distribution of gender that can help obtain optimal results. However, an organization should consider certain important factors like safety, an equal balance of power, and anti-bullying policies that can bring major wonders. Let’s just look at 4 major benefits: Women Attract More Women: Women at leadership positions can drive the

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organization to recruit, nurture, grow a pipeline of more women within the organizational ecosystem.

Natural Mediators: Women are good listeners, excellent communicators, and collaborative in nature. This means that whenever there are conflicting situations at the workplace — whether it is between two employees or a group — female workers are good at seeing both sides of the arguments and navigate to a palatable / midway solution.

equity/ diversity at the workplace as several organizations are headed toward normalizing flexible working. Of course, the underlying societal attitude and “stereotype” behaviours play a significant role in bridging the gender diversity gap.

While technology does not necessarily directly impact gender equity at the workplace, organizations can take it as an opportunity to address this challenge. By taking the necessary steps, organizations must ensure that technology contributes to equity and not against.

Team Players: Women are natural team players – they can take people together in their decisions and drive consensus.

This is important, especially in growing organizations where having inclusivity is a critical element.

Diversity and Inclusion are often used interchangeably. Is Diversity same as Inclusion? Can an organization achieve diversity without being inclusive? And other way round?

Better Service oriented: Women are naturally inclined to provide excellent service, which allows them to deal with customers with easy and carry flawless execution as compared to their male counterparts. In fact, it gives ways to communicating customers properly that give ways to make a purchase decision faster (for customers).

Managing Resources: It is a known fact that women are far superior when it comes to managing resources at home/ office / social intersections. Women are way more frugal and stay more “balanced” in their thinking and approach.

Is there a role for Technology in this space? How will technology change the workplace dynamics in near future?

The recent pandemic has provided organizations with solutions and ability to decipher how technology can help them respond to such events and how it can improve gender diversity at work.

Fortunately, the widespread adoption of technology made it possible for a large section of employees to work remotely with few hiccups. Technology also made it possible for professionals to balance work and personal life. Lack of regular childcare options, education institutes or schools, forced working parents to share their responsibilities and adopt to new work practices. This development has a massive potential to improve gender

That is a very good question. Yes, you are correct, Diversity is often mistaken for inclusiveness, but the two terms are not synonymous. There is no diversity without inclusion. Inclusion makes diversity more meaningful, hence it will make diversity stick more naturally within an organization. You may have diversity but not be inclusive, it is still a problem. If the organization is not doing its best to create a sense of belonging for all employees, it cannot call itself a diverse and inclusive organization. While diversity might get talent through the front door, it is inclusion that helps to retain the top talent so that the company benefits from their ideas, skills, and engagement – and ultimately achieves better success metrics. Inclusion is the missing link between employees’ motivation to work, be engaged 100% and take pride in their job & organization.

Sustained commitment from every organization and individual that place gender diversity among the important priorities on their agenda is a key to the success of this journey.

As they say, ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’, people from different planets can bring in different perspectives, and we have increasingly realized that this diversity of thought is positive for business. It promotes not only inclusivity and diversity, but also fosters creativity and empathy, which are key skills required to compete and succeed in an environment where tech is dominating mankind.

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Shailesh Haribhakti, Board Chairman, Board Director, Chartered and Cost Accountant, an Internal Auditor, and a Certified Financial Planner & Fraud Examiner “We need to celebrate Collaboration and Diversity.”

Is there something called Glass Ceiling? Does it hold any truth?

There is no glass ceiling as far as I can see. If anything within 4 years, we will have a webinar like this where there will be a majority of males and a minority of women who are going to talk about gender diversity in the opposite direction. I can say it with so much conviction because I have seen the value of true diversity.

In the year 2014-15 when I took the responsibility to head my Rotary Club, we created a board which was 50% men and 50% women. Every one of the female members of my board have subsequently become the presidents of the Rotary Club. This is just an incredible example of what the No Glass Ceiling concept talks about. I think what we need to aspire towards now is complete naturalness.

There should be no conversation at all on gender diversity. We need to celebrate collaboration and diversity. It is because diversity brings incredible value to boards, not-for-profits, to almost every entity that one can serve. Ultimately my feeling is there are going to be certain areas in human effort which naturally will gravitate towards a particular gender. What has happened till date is that tough work that men used to do and became the preserver is now over. Today anyone can do any work and is today a given fact. There is no restriction on

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education, no restriction on voting, no restriction on anything that embedded the thought of discrimination into the minds of inferiority or superiority. I think all of that has been broken. We have lived through the advantage of it.

In a natural way, we have gravitated to everything moving and being propelled by competence and by delivery of actual outcome. Therefore, I say it with great conviction that there is no limit to anybody exploiting their full potential.

equation and that ability to bring things to the fore started working. In one area I would point out that perhaps the world will be well advised to hand it over to the females and that is sustainability. I think the aptitude & attitude of saving planet and getting to net-zero is possible so much more when females take over.

That is going to be the gamechanger in the real sense. Roles need to be based on competency and the way one can deliver rather than gender stereotyping.

Does bringing women on board would help ease the situation or amplify the problem?

Is there a role model leadership here?

I think it works beautifully. Every public limited company board that I am associated with has at least two women on the board. Let me point to a new emerging trend… there is an exchange of role that is happening. I am seeing males wanting to take on roles that were traditionally assigned to females. Gender transitioning signs are extremely positive steps. For instance, when Ameera Shah became the chairperson of one of the committees, to work under her was immense pleasure. When I recollect the competent way which Nishi Vasudeva who is the ex-MD of Hindustan Petroleum, when she took charge of the committee that I sit on, it was such a pleasure to see the new way in which that leadership

There is a new expression that is doing the rounds… Low Code, No Code. There should be no reason of gender biasedness.

It is all going to be driven by who can ask the right question. We must stop our gender bias altogether. We need to define leadership in terms of quality, attributes, accomplishments, motivations that are generated and actions that are implemented. We need to go to the basics. Leadership and outcome are what we are looking at. We want growth. I find that the singularity will emerge at the cusp of our consciousness being keenly focused on sustainability, the adoption of technology and spirituality. If we do not bring these three forces together, we will keep thinking in a divided way. We need to think holistically. Unless the holistic

BOARDROOM BYTES thinking is developed, we will get lost and therefore we need to move to brasstacks of how we gain for everybody and not just for ourselves.

Would sustainability be an area that will bring more women leaders into the board membership?

As I said, I am in a favor of handing over the leadership baton to women because it is the instinct of the mother, it’s the real softness which connects them to what needs to be long lasting, regenerative, productive and sustained. There is a mindset which says that you cannot have women in a mine. I argue that should not be the case. There are women who want to take up that challenge. If they are sufficiently protected, there is sufficient care taken to make sure that the workplace is safe, there is no reason why women should not be allowed in mines. Today it is not about the gender, it is about the organization’s thought process on what needs to be done to ensure safety. Some organizations take it to a greater extreme. Depending on how you think as an organization, things will change and therefore, I believe in

We need to define leadership in terms of quality, attributes, accomplishments, motivations that are generated and actions that are implemented. We need to go to the basics. Leadership and outcome are what we are looking at. We want growth. I find that the singularity will emerge at the cusp of our consciousness being keenly focused on Sustainability, the adoption of Technology and Spirituality. If we do not bring these three forces together, we will keep thinking in a divided way. Unless the holistic thinking is developed, we will get lost and therefore we need to move to brass-tacks of how we gain for everybody and not just for ourselves. sustainability, who better to argue for clean power; for making sure that carbon is captured and sequestered; argue for e-vehicles or driverless cars; and the

answer is so obvious – WOMEN.

Aparna Sharma, Sr. HR Professional - HR Advisor, Board Member, Coach, Counsellor,Trainer, Best Selling Author, Motivational Speaker “True change will come only when Diversity becomes part of the business ethos and not a mandate.”

Is gender diversity being practiced in the corporates today or is it remaining on paper as lip service?

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To my mind, the importance of gender diversity at the workplace is a wellaccepted fact. I am glad that corporates

today have moved beyond asking about the business case for gender diversity. I am happy that we have moved the needle

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BOARDROOM BYTES in bringing the value of gender diversity to the boardroom too. While more and more companies are addressing the need to bridge the gap in their respective businesses, there are instances I must admit where it is seen as a “buzzword”.

There are organizations that fall in both categories. In India Inc., there are certain functions and levels that remain less accepting of women at the workplace. Let us acknowledge the fact that we would like it to be a level playing field, but for certain functions and levels, it’s still not.

However, positive seminal progress has surely been made. We have covered a lot of ground.

If we were to look at India based MNCs, they are adopting their global entity’s gender diversity norms. If we look at a few leading Technology firms & Consultancies, they seem to be the flagbearers in ensuring gender diversity.

However, Indian companies, particularly, Technology firms are also working hard to catch up with the global peers. They are looking at ways to pay higher incentives for referring women candidates or hiring women who are on a break to get back to work or offering special benefits for better work life balance such as childcare.

I am excited to say that Indian firms are leaving no stone unturned as far as efforts are concerned. However, to my mind, true change will come only when diversity becomes part of the business ethos and not a mandate.

We clearly do not have a problem with lack of talent. A lot of companies such as TCS, Infosys, Accenture, RBS, Genpact, etc. have a Second career program for women who want to return to work post break. Companies are making efforts to integrate and embrace women into the corporate fabric. On the other side, if you look at having women Independent Director on Corporate Boards, the practice started as a mandate. To take the first steps, it’s probably important that some of these changes get mandated. Only once when people have experienced, do they actually look at the tangible gains or value of having women on the Board. Till then, you have to keep proving the business case. There is a lot of good intent, but a lot of things get lost in execution.

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People often say, “men are independent while women are codependent.” What’s your thought on that?

Stereotyping is a real phenomenon not only at workplaces but at our homes too. Women’s share in the engineering space has gone up to around 40% at the educational level. This suggests that more and more women are getting into engineering which otherwise was always seen as male territory. However, this does not reflect in the actual employment numbers in terms of how many women are employed in organizations. In fact, women in the technical field especially conventional engineering are still in abysmal numbers. If we look at the field of technology, the percentage of female employees in Software Testing is higher than in Core Programming as if relegating female employees to “less critical, lower complexity” jobs.

There are certain qualities which can be attributed to male gender and certain characteristics to female gender. However, if you look at a corporate leader of any organization, any leader has to focus on things which are gender agnostic. They have to be more empathetic at certain times, very assertive and aggressive at other times. In order to succeed, women try to ape men, but the beauty lies in collaborating and co-existing in the ecosystem by complementing each other and not giving into stereotypes that the society has put in. I do not think females need to become alpha-males or vice versa.

Each gender has their own strengths and that is what everyone needs to bring to the organization. In short, stereotyping exists because of societal conditioning.

What do you have to say on women bearing the dual responsibility of a home maker and a thorough corporate professional?

It is real and it is true. However, we are witnessing equal participation from males at home helping with household chores.

We have real bright spots and sparks and I hope the tribe grows. The reality is that we can talk about the division of labor.

I think there is a primary responsibility that the lady has who may be a CEO but once you are back home, you must don the hat of a superwoman of being a

mother, a daughter, a wife, and a home maker to say the least.

This Pandemic has altered a lot of attitudes towards Work from Home, and it has probably changed forever the way we work. It is tempting to think that flexible work options will become a great equalizer for women. But there are other stories as well where women had to leave work to take on the household responsibilities during the pandemic since last year. Women need to prioritize and balance on all fronts. Also, women need to have a strong network of support.

It is critical. Else, there will be a situation of conflict between the family goals and the work goals. That is one stress that can be minimized if all of these can be put in place. Mindset change or social conditioning take time to change but the wheels seem to be turning in the right direction.

What is your perspective on Diversity & Inclusion?

There is a lot of talk about Diversity & Inclusion in corporate India these days – rightly so. Apart from promoting equity, greater gender and generational diversity in the workplace has repeatedly shown bottom-line benefits to businesses. But all this talk, what one could call the “diversity discourse,” is not necessarily translating into action or sustained gains for all employees, leaders, or organizations.

Progress is slow, partly because change never comes easily, and diversifying its executive ranks is one of the biggest socio-economic and cultural challenges in corporate India. But the importance and benefits that come with moving towards diversity and inclusion in executive teams can’t be overstated.

In my conversations about increasing diversity and inclusion, I tend to emphasize that: • Companies that increase diversity create a significant competitive advantage for themselves and their shareholders.

• The ability to recruit and lead a diverse workforce is now a critical business competency within talent management. Companies that do not invest in mastering this competency, risk falling behind in the war for talent.

BOARDROOM BYTES Verna Myers has famously quoted, ‘Diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance.’ Diversity is a critical competitive success factor in today’s business world. Organizations with culturally sensitive leaders will be better positioned to attract the best candidates to their organizations. Recognizing the competitive advantage of a diverse workforce in an increasingly diverse marketplace, companies are trying to include Diversity and Inclusion elements in their leadership development programs. I believe there is a lot changing in favor of women at the workplace, but there’s lot more to be done to see women at the top.

• Companies and managers that do not hold leadership accountable for improving diversity and inclusion hurt their bottom lines.

The argument that increasing diversity brings financial benefits to companies is not vague or idealistic, it is empirical. McKinsey research indicates that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on their executive teams are 21% more likely to see aboveaverage profitability than companies in the bottom quartile.

Why does diversity have such net positive impact on a company’s bottom line? I think it is partly because managers who value integrating diversity into an organization’s norms are strong leaders.

They naturally seek to partner with other leaders who have successfully operationalized their diversity and inclusion aspirations. This, in turn, inspires other business leaders to seek opportunities for collaboration with like-minded leaders and organizations.

Organizations whose cultural makeup mirrors societal and demographic changes will be better positioned to respond to the expectations of consumers, partners, and stakeholders.

Several roadblocks — such as no time set aside for development, lack of structured training and programs, and lack of support from top management or middle management, prevent organizations from attaining the required D&I maturity.

Suggestions for overcoming these roadblocks, thus increasing leadership diversity competencies in your organization include:

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- Including leadership diversity competencies in all leadership development programs & initiatives - Increasing awareness through individual and group training and mentoring - Linking D&I goals to the company’s business framework - Suggestions for overcoming the roadblocks to the creation of a culture of inclusion include Creating a Diversity Council.

So how do leaders begin to master this competency?

First, they need to be intentional about it. If they are, they will be thought of as essential to the company’s highvalue talent pool. Second, they need to understand how and where to learn this skill. For instance, working in companies that have diversity-specific goals can lead to real learning. Numerous groups are also ready and willing to help leaders become better diversity allies within their organizations and beyond. Third, leaders need to inspect and respect the evidence before them. Like it or not, and ready or not, our world is changing.

Those organizations unable to change will get left behind. Importantly, the decision leaders must make is whether they will be on the right side of history.

Commitment is the key to real and transformational action. Changing structural and cultural norms takes time.

It requires talking openly about diversity as a first step and holding our leaders accountable.

A strategic approach gives people confidence in the organizational

direction, and it moves the organization forward by harnessing the energy of people passionate about co-creating the world they envision. None of this is easy, but our successes to date show we can give people the tools to resist the temptation to revert to what’s easy when things get tough.

The top-ranked organizations in Human Capital Media’s Diversity Value Index offer additional guidelines to emulate, including the following: - Align D&I practices to organizational goals - Have a workforce that reflects the diversity of their customer base - Provide unconscious bias training - Sponsor diversity events in the community, thus creating interest in their organization among diverse members of the population.

My sense of hope is matched by my competitive urgency. I am convinced that the organizations that tackle Diversity and Inclusion will be better off today and better prepared for tomorrow. We must commit to changing our leadership paradigm to prepare for the future in a changing environment where – of all the skills needed for success – effectively leading in diversity and inclusion is chief among them. Proving the ROI of diversity initiatives & encouraging and enabling multiculturalism training are among other efforts.

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Sharada Sunder, Success Coach, Leadership facilitator,Advisory Board member, Consultant, Founder, Saralife Consulting “Make Smart Choices.”

How should women leaders build resilience to break the glass ceiling?

The glass ceiling, in my view, still exists in varying degrees across organizations, geographies, in mindsets, in our social systems too. To the women I would suggest DON’T GIVE UP. It is a journey to the top and it needs to be sustained…

Three practical suggestion I would like to share with you: First: Have an intentional career growth. If equal opportunities are a challenge, then communicate to your seniors about your confidence and interest in taking up higher roles. This will bring awareness about your candidature and pave the way for equal opportunities, even going forward. And have the selfbelief that you can do it. Because you can… despite how much ever others around you say that it is difficult for a woman to lead.

Second: Women at the workplace must drop the gender tag because You are a professional at work. That is it. it is incidental that you are a woman too.

This attitude at workplace will encourage others to drop the gender reference as well and more importantly drop the bias that come along-with the tag.

Third: You must delegate tasks that you can and must delegate. This is on the personal front. Women, who are career oriented and have responsibilities as a

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home maker are practically doing two jobs, and if you are one such woman, congratulations, you are a Super Woman.

But now I want to tell you that you may reach burn out quickly if you do not learn to delegate smartly... to avoid this, become a smart super woman. And how is that?

Choose things that you wish to do yourself and those which you can delegate or outsource. Because there is only one you and there is only 24 hours in a day.

For example, if you love cooking for your family and do not wish to outsource this, that is fine. But you may choose to outsource other tasks to manage your time. Make these smart choices everyday with your time. This will help you be resilient, persevere and succeed at both fronts of career and home.

And one important thing I would recommend to all women is to pay attention to themselves as well. While you beautifully balance work and home, manage your career goals and achieve success, remember to take care of yourself.

Always! I say this because women often forget to take care of themselves. So, take care of your physical health, your mental wellness, and your money.

What organizations can do to drive the diversity and inclusion agenda?

I think having a strategy or a policy on gender diversity is a great starting point

for organizations. When this strategy is converted into cascading goals and linked to increments and growth only then it gains focus and momentum. Not otherwise. Up to here, I am sure many organizations who have this goal, find it easy.

The weak link however could be the lack of rigor in reviewing this Key result area. If this goal can be reviewed with equal interest, asking the right questions, like you would review sales numbers, we will make better progress in gender diversity. Getting to the real reason for the gaps, if any, and then fixing it will ensure results on diversity. The other thing that comes to my mind is how organizations celebrate women’s day. It is time to reflect and see is it just tokenism, a PR exercise or have we really improved on this account? Perhaps it is now time to reflect on what are we celebrating?

Instead of celebrating women in the workforce, can we look at celebrating equal growth opportunities for men and women in the workforce? This shift will help organizations to climb the next step on gender diversity.

Companies with high female leadership, outperform their less diverse peers. Are we not hiring leaders at the top to reap the benefits? Is there an issue at the strategy level or at the execution level?

BOARDROOM BYTES Role model is an ever-inspiring concept, and our role models constantly evolve. I believe that it is not necessary for a woman to be inspired only by other women leaders.

I have been inspired by many wonderful business leaders, both men and women. It is the quality of leadership that is appealing and inspiring, irrespective of gender. There is no dearth of talented women who can lead, and there is no dearth of role models. You just need to look at people who lead successfully be it within your organization, industry, nation or world, roles models are waiting for you to learn from their success.

My experience is that both men and women bring richly complementing and varied skills to the leadership team and hence such companies always gain an edge and a multiplier effect on productivity and profits.

Despite this seemingly clear

benefit to companies, why is the ratio not getting better?

Well, it could be different reasons for different companies. For some it could be that gender diversity is not given a strategic importance, for others it could be that seeing the strategy through to the finish is an issue. Largely, intent drives

the diversity strategy at the top and unbiased mindsets of its function heads, drives its successful execution. So I do know that if the strategic intent is clear and the managerial review is outcome driven, then execution will have to fall in place. Excuses will die.

Shital Kakkar Mehra, Executive Presence, CEO Coach, Board Advisor, Social Entrepreneur “Simply raising the number of women at the workplace does not lead to inclusion. Changing the mindset and changing the corporate policy is important.”

What is your view on Diversity and Inclusion?

Diversity and Inclusion are not the same.

It is important to distinguish quickly between the two. A simple example is if you are hiring employees from any under-represented group be it LGBTQ, ethnic minorities, women, people with

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disabilities, etc., the employer is doing a great job on diversity. However, that is inadequate. After being hired, ask the under-represented group: first, are you bringing your most authentic self at work? Secondly, do you resist sharing your opinion at work?

That is where inclusion comes in

because inclusion is about equality.

Simply raising the number of women at the workplace does not lead to inclusion.

Changing the mindset and changing the corporate policy is important. Inclusion means you have a compassionate mindset and mutual respect. Interestingly diversity is tangible and can be measured

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BOARDROOM BYTES Equality is equal opportunity and equity is everything needed to get there, which sometimes could get a bit skewed. Under-represented group may require a lot of support to create an equal opportunity situation. The future does look bright, and equity & equality are the ways forward. whereas inclusion is less tangible. This explains why diversity is meaningless unless it is backed by inclusion. There will be no results in the long-term if you make a quick fix like increasing gender pay gap or putting in place antiharassment policies or getting a woman director on the board – these are some examples of diversity. On the other hand, inclusion including measures to stop sexist behavior at work, existence of an old-boys club or how much does your firm truly supporting women at midcareer?

Simple way to juggle this is to check if the under-represented groups in your organization report or speak up against inequality. If they are, you have genuinely got inclusion or are on the path and if they are not, you need to go back to the drawing board and figure out what is inclusion for your organization and how to implement it in your organization.

Is leadership style a barrier?

There is lot of unconscious bias, which still exists and is all around us. We have all heard things such as men are more aggressive than women, so they get promoted; or after a certain age, women will struggle with work life balance and will be unable to perform leadership duties; or women are more sensitive, maybe they are unable to handle pressure of leadership; men are the primary bread-earners and women of course have an add-on income. On the other hand, male leaders are seen as more constant and powerful. In fact, they are even allowed to become aggressive if situations demand. But our expectations from women leaders are quite different.

If they act too aggressive, it gets too much for us to manage. If they do not, we term them weak. But honestly, this is far away from the truth. The pandemic has clearly shown us that all nations which had women at the top performed so much better than those that had men at the helm. Women leaders do bring a

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lot to the table. They are more inclusive, more community driven. They like to lead by consensus rather than dictating things. They are very collaborative.

Research has categorically stated that people take more ownership when there is more collaboration. Companies which are more diverse and have more women at the top, they perform so much better than less diverse organizations in every parameter – profit, employee engagement, employee retention; productivity; creativity; innovation, so on and so forth. Women leadership brings balance and is need of the hour.

What is your view on diversity quota? Does it add value for the organization?

I am completely against any quota system as it merely works as a short-term fix. To create impact, one must really track their journey from the starts. Besides, quota also leads to people who are unsuitable, unenthusiastic, and not the best to join the workforce. In the Indian workplace, there are 17% women on board, it was mandated but there are only 11% women in leadership position. This shows that leadership positions require support for decades, unlike board positions.

Companies must support their women leaders over 20 years, if they want to see a strong pipeline.

Is there a syndrome of leakage in the pipeline? How many female leaders are promoted to the next level as compared to men?

If you hire 50% women at the entry level and only 11% at the leadership level, that means there is a leakage in the pipeline. Now the leakage clearly is for every organization to address and examine What, When and Where it happened. Mostly it happens at the midlevel. Research has shown that if you can support women at mid-level, then you can have adequate women representatives in the leadership position. Of course,

having better policies, maternity leave, paid & unpaid leaves, paternity leave, are always a great add-on. I believe senior leadership should lead by example and harp on the importance between worklife balance. If that happens, women also feel secured and are convinced that it is right to take the time out. Otherwise, many women feel that it can impact their career development or their future in the organization.

When I coach women at any level, I always tell them that you are the CEO of your own personal brand. Companies spend billions of dollars every year in promoting their brand, so nothing should stop women from promoting their achievements and their credentials.

Firstly, brands need investments, so please invest in yourself and do it guiltfree. Secondly, brands need promotion, so do not be guilty promoting yourself.

It is important to create a strong internal and external network because brands need visibility. Become the CEO of your own brand and take it UP!

INTERVIEW

TEST’ING THE METTLE “We created a team of people that understood the journey and the vision of the leader and was prepared for the dynamic environment and repeated change.

We created a war room for managing our supply chain challenges. We also aligned our business partners at all the locations in case they were not able to make the supplies, then we transported the material with the help of our logistics team. With the support of our vendors, we could quickly ramp up our capacities and create new facilities for Covid testing with the increased capacity of handling huge surge of samples load,” shares Jaipal Singh, DGM – Commercial, Dr. Lal PathLabs Ltd., during an interview…

How was the year 2020 for you in managing supply chain?

It was an extremely critical period. Lot of learnings and opportunities were a part of the tumultuous ride. We took efforts to understand the vendors’ capabilities because the challenges which were thrown upon us was completely unknown as till February 2020, no one in India was able to comprehend what was going to hit us in the times to come.

From February 2020, we started realizing that our imports would get strained going forward. So, we immediately placed advanced orders and procured three months inventory. We also found several new players in the market to reduce our dependency on imports. As this was an unprecedented challenge, if we could not innovate in the shortest possible time along with our vendor base, we would

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have to lose our business. We realized that our risk mitigation strategy was not up to the mark to tide over the pandemic shockwaves. In short, what worked well for us was collaborating with new partners, enhancing vendor capabilities, and importing materials well ahead of time to withstand losses. We need to be future ready for any such circumstances and today we can say with confidence that with our abled team, we are fully prepared to turn such adversities into opportunities.

To sum it up, it was a very challenging environment for the entire industry especially for healthcare. There was big bottleneck for the Covid Testing material and Personal Protection Equipment. It was a year of overpromise and underdelivery while demand supply elasticity was exceedingly high.

With over 22 years of experience, Jaipal Singh has expertise in procurement, material management and inventory management. Currently he is heading direct & indirect sourcing at Dr. Lal PathLabs. He is an MBA in Materials Management from Indian Institute of Materials Management and has also done Graduate Diploma in Materials Management.

Being in the frontline of this pandemic, what were the challenges faced by private players as there were lot many directives that were being altered one after another?

Firstly, non-availability of goods with authorized dealer/distributor was very high. Many new opportunist vendors had emerged in this period to tap the opportunity. To iterate you with an example, our newly launched kits for Covid testing got approvals only in the month of April 2020 when the government allowed private players for mass testing. We started our journey of developing Covid kits and converted our three existing facilities in Delhi and Kolkata into full-fledged covid testing labs to start with. Our normal business operations had hit badly with the volumes plunging from 90% to 20%.

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INTERVIEW It was an extremely challenging environment for the entire industry especially for healthcare. There was big bottleneck for the Covid Testing material and Personal Protection Equipment. It was a year of overpromise and under-delivery while demand supply elasticity was very high.

The experience of handling H1N1 virus outbreak came in handy here for our teams to make the turnaround faster.

The only challenge was the lockdown to contain the spread of the virus. During those times, our teams had to apply for essential service passes from the local authorities. Then came the challenge of getting the services of our vendors as they didn’t come under the essential services. We again had to rush back to the authorities and explain them the criticality. We went door-to-door to help our vendors in utilizing their services.

Then we had to run around for statutory approvals. And that had to happen in the shortest possible time, else we could have lost out on this opportunity.

Buying the standard product was the biggest challenge. Procuring N95 masks and sanitizers was a bigger challenge as you must be already aware that during the initial outbreak, there was a huge shortage of these items in the market. We quickly diverted our existing production facility in developing sanitizers as we had the know-how.

We also had a tough time in transporting testing equipment from one part of the country to another as there were practically no means of faster travel. In that case, many of the machines needed for testing purposes had to be transported through dedicated vehicles.

This again took lot of time.

All in all, with the support of our vendors, we could quickly ramp up our capacities and created new facilities for Covid testing with the increased capacity of handling huge surge of samples load.

During the journey, we also tried to have our own in-house development of vital product, which was not the case earlier. So, there were challenges, at the same time, the innovative spirits of our team led the company to achieve the unprecedented.

How are you overcoming such challenges?

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We created a team of people that understood the journey and the vision of the leader and was prepared for the dynamic environment and repeated change. We created a war room for managing our supply chain challenges.

We kept the entire team members updated daily about the development.

We also aligned our business partner with all the locations, in case they were not able to make the supplies, then we transported the material with the help of our logistics team. We have our own logistics team, so our dependency on third party logistics service providers was minimal. Having said that, during the pandemic as the caseloads started increasing, we reached out to 3PLs who have a larger network of fleets and could give us an edge in expanding our business. We hired ambulances to commute our employees to work with their essential service passes. It was an absolute nightmare to comply with rules & guidelines of every state government as each had their own covid regulations and every company had to abide by them.

How supportive was ICMR during the entire course of time?

I would like to mention that ICMR was quite forthright, and the approvals used to come through quickly. They were also aggressive in ensuring that private labs be fully utilized to contain the spread of virus. Initially we had to import certain kits from Europe, our customs clearance officers also made sure that the consignment does not get stalled in the transit and the entire process was completely seamless. They were working 24*7.

Please enlighten us on the digital transformation journey in supply chain.

We are a tech-savvy organization and had deployed technology tools to track our collection centers real-time. At every point of our business node, technology

aided immensely during pandemic. It ensured transparency, aided in data analytics and faster decision making at all times. We had set a 5-point agenda to harness technology and ensure operational sustenance. These include: • Product Availability – being able to view the availability of different product segments to see products that matter most for your business • Service Levels by location/channel/ customer and product hierarchy – being able to view these with the contribution to sales • On-time-in-full performance of suppliers and scorecards where multiple KPIs are combined • On-time-in-full performance of distribution centers • Customer Satisfaction scores side by side with the service level and availability metrics

What were the procurement challenges that you had encountered during the pandemic and how did you manage them?

During this journey, while carrying out with the Covid testing, we had to ensure that our regular business moves on swiftly as well. We made concerted efforts in covering existing orders and prevent supply shortages. We employed a volume-based operational plan using sales forecast and constrained supply capability. We also optimized on supply and demand matching across the end-toend supply chain. We worked on demanddriven, profitable supply response to anticipated demand across the extended supply chain (e.g., key customers and/ or suppliers) and strategically aligned value network plan supporting growth, identifying new demand channels and speed to market.

How do you think the scenario would look like soon? How are you bracing for the changing times?

I believe that we need to address

INTERVIEW We need to understand the impact of the market price index on demand and analyze the root cause of stock-outs. There are many ways companies can achieve that: Modeling the impact of weather events; automatic identifying and removing outlier events from the historical data; modeling impact of promotions and campaigns; estimating revenue impact of lost sales when stock-outs occur; uncovering halo and cannibalization effects across product portfolio; understanding the impact of external trends on your sales performance; as well as attribute-based forecasting when introducing new products. One must need to manage dynamic safety-stock calculations.

inaccurate and incomplete product & location hierarchy and attribute data.

Companies need to maintain all the past and future events in a database.

There needs to be accurate and timely reconciliation of purchase orders with receipts as well as ensure accurate stockout data. Companies need to have up-todate supplier lead times. Other important attributes ensuring smooth business operations include maintaining business and commercial rules in a systematic manner; maintaining outlier events that have influenced demand patterns or supply availability; and automating product segmentation based on multiple dimensions including revenue, demand variability, supplier lead-times to manage different service level targets.

We need to understand the impact of the market price index on demand and analyze the root cause of stockouts. There are many ways companies can achieve that: Modeling the impact of weather events; automatic identifying

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and removing outlier events from the historical data; modeling impact of promotions and campaigns; estimating revenue impact of lost sales when stock-outs occur; Uncovering halo and cannibalization effects across product portfolio; understanding the impact of external trends on your sales performance; as well as attributebased forecasting when introducing new products. All in all, one must need to manage dynamic safety-stock calculations. Having withstood one of the toughest times in our lifetime, we are confident that we are fully prepared to manage the current second wave too as now we have the experience, expertise, and capability to manage the operations and the nitty-gritties.

What is your advice to the government to efficiently handle the pandemic through an efficient supply chain?

SOPs for the corporates. What happened during early days was while we got the essential work categorization, our vendors did not. They need to understand that the ancillary service providers are also equally important in running the operations seamlessly. I will give you an example. Thermocol was not available for transporting samples as it was not considered an essential commodity. We had to run around to ensure that those vendors be given essential services passes so that they could quickly help us get the desired material. We had to ensure that there are minimal touchpoints as there were evident fears of contamination, which was the last thing we wanted to get into at the peak of the pandemic.

While I understand it was a completely unforeseen event for all of us including the government, if they could had thought of the end-to-end value chain, I feel these teething issues could have been avoided very well.

The government needs to lay out clear

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COVER STORY

The Four Pillars of Digital Transformation

Improving the Odds

The Covid-19 pandemic has increased the pace of digital adoption in the corporate world. Without digital adoption, companies globally would not have been able to serve their customers in these times. IDC predicts that by 2023, 53% of all investments in information and communication technology will be towards digital transformation. This transformation affects each level of an organization and brings together data across areas to work together more effectively. By taking advantage of workflow automation and advanced processing, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), companies can connect the dots on the customer journey in a way that was not possible before. Our webinar on ‘Four Pillars Digital Model – Governance & Leadership, Process & Capabilities, people & Culture, and Technology & Innovation’ offered tremendous insights to attendees on the HOW, WHAT & WHY of Digital Transformation. Here is offering you astute thoughts of our expert panel who made this webinar a truly engaging affair…

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COVER STORY

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COVER STORY

Dr. Samir Yerpude, Deputy General Manager – Corporate IT, Tata Motors Ltd. “To mitigate the risks, organizations need to develop on three core capabilities – Hyper-awareness and Connectedness, Informed Decision Making and Agile Execution. With these three core capabilities and customer experience driven digital transformation, organizations can expect to be successful.”

What does the word Transformation mean in Digital Transformation? What kind of transformational needs should leaders be aware of?

Transformation warrants for an act of changing something profoundly.

The Digital Transformation is the integration of Digital Technology into all areas of a business, resulting in fundamental changes in how a business transacts with a customer and the value they deliver to their customers.

It is the leader’s responsibility to foster enthusiasm among the employees for the transformation opportunities that create value for the customer. The organizations which did not embrace the digital transformation are either acquired for or are on the verge of liquidation. The core elements to accomplish the digital transformation include People, Process and Technology. Leadership overarches all these elements bringing in the Strategy and Governance to orchestrate and deliver the transformation. Digital Transformation helps the organization in achieving the competitive edge in the market supporting its longevity.

What role does AI play in digital transformation? Where does that leave people & culture?

Artificial Intelligence fundamentally refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines programmed to think and mimic human. It’s a niche area using Data Science, which necessarily means that it is driven by the data collated through different means. Data collated could be transactional or behavioral, that fundamentally is helpful to simulate

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human intelligence in machines. AI plays a major role in decision making and automation in the digital transformation to deliver customer experience and generate value. Relating AI to the people and culture needs to be looked at a bit differently. Traditionally humans were engaged in performing tasks which were mundane in nature. These tasks are now taken over by the technologies and the automations accomplished by deploying digital data. This has led humans to accomplish tasks which require skill and experience. The quality jobs are undertaken by humans improving their skills and elevating their satisfaction.

Senior Leadership further nurtures the learning culture incorporating the customer centric DNA, eradicating the fear of technologies taking over human work.

How important is senior leadership buy-in (unconditional alignment) when you embark upon Digital Transformation journey?

That is a particularly important question.

Companies are in a constant cycle of creating value, monetizing value, and defending value. While the cycle keeps repeating itself, the way a company goes about this cycle changes over time.

Digital Transformation is unique. It is a top-down approach and does not depend upon parameters such as size of an organization, etc. Entrenched in the digital age, and businesses of all sorts are creating clever, effective, and disruptive ways of leveraging technology, senior leadership plays an important role in the Organization Operating Model. In

contrast with the traditional silos, in the contemporary operating model, customer occupies the center stage, and resources, business processes and technologies aligned to deliver the customer experience and value. Senior leadership brings in the strategy and governance aspect to ensure the actions and measurement of performance. And finally, the sponsorship which is critical.

A digital leader with his creativity and innovative mindset formulates the idea into reality.

Fail fast and move forward is the Mantra today, according to you which area / function should be prioritized for digitalization?

In the Information Technology domain, we call it POC i.e., Proof of Concept.

Digital Transformation offers the muchneeded competitive edge. And companies will have to embrace Digital Technologies to generate value for their customers basis the digital data collated. The question that qualifies attention from the organization perspective is, how can we be competitive in the market? How do we build a customer centric ecosystem? In my mind, it is not about a single function but about how the organization is able to orchestrate different functions deploying digital technologies and bring a radical change in the customer experience to secure longevity for the organization.

Every digital transformation is aligned with the customer. The focus of the organization needs to be on the Customer Centricity and the Experience Delivered, simultaneously creating value. Moreover, to mitigate the risks, organizations need to develop on three

COVER STORY core capabilities – Hyper-awareness and Connectedness, Informed Decision Making and Agile Execution. With these three core capabilities and customer experience driven digital transformation, organizations can expect to be successful.

Future belongs to mix professionals (left-brained & right-brained and the new “Z” generation). How can we stop Technology from crossing the Ethical Lines in our Social / personal lives?

Digital Technologies have changed the way in which companies have ensured the value delivery to its customers. We need to dig a bit deeper to understand the

mix of professionals and the difference between the Millennials and the Gen Z or the Alphas.

Gen Z is pragmatic while the Millennials are idealistic. Gen Z is attracted to purchases that maximize the value of money, whereas Millennials are more interested in the entire customer experience of buying a product.

Millennials expect customer experience and Gen Z expects organizations to do innovation and offer digital experience because of which organization, on other hand, have moved from Internet of Things to Internet of Behavior where they collect the digital dust of people’s lives from a variety of sources, and public or private and use this information to

influence behavior.

Organizations have an uphill task to ensure the requisite cybersecurity strategy in a connected ecosystem and connected society. Significant measures are announced in terms of the regulations and laws. These are practiced and implemented to take care of the data breaches, but in my mind, we as individuals have a larger role to play. Simple yet effective things that we should look for is Trust, Transparency and Experience during the digital interactions. The fact we all should bear in mind is that we are as much responsible for our own data as the organization.

Tridib Bhattacharjee, Founder & Chief Advisor, Astramind Consulting “A Digitally Transformed enterprise is connected, collaborative, and supported by real-time data & analytics.”

Can you please elaborate on the four-pillar digital model?

The purpose of these four pillars is to keep the digital transformation program in balance. Since the digital transformation is driven by top management, the first pillar is Governance & Leadership. The top management needs to provide clear vision & strategy to be able to create the right digital roadmap for the company.

We expect the management to have high level of digital fluency. They also need to be the sponsors for the digital transformation program. The second pillar is People and Culture. You cannot drive any program if people are not attuned or engaged. It is especially important for organization leaders to engage the employees of the organization and align

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the culture to ensure a successful digital transformation journey. The leadership team should be open to transform the culture. Organizations should also be open to develop Digital Champions.

They need to have the risk appetite to drive changes. They should be able to do Change Management. The third pillar is Capability & Processes. In this context, organizations need to enhance their capabilities & competencies and transform their customer & organization facing policies and processes. The fourth pillar is Technology & Innovation.

Once you have figured out the exact requirements, you need to bring the desired technological changes that are in tune with the organizational framework and deploy relevant technology

platforms, programs, systems, and innovation practices. If these four pillars are balanced, the digital transformation program will move smoothly.

A successful digital transformation journey requires a top-down approach.

Digital agenda is led from the top by leaders with high digital fluency. They need to create a high-performing culture and engage employees at different levels by helping them understand the WIIFM (What is in it for Me). Organization leaders must secure the right talent to foster digital innovation and effectively support employees to execute on strategic aspirations. They also need to benchmark the digital culture, mindsets, and behaviors both internally and against digital leaders to prioritize the cultural

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COVER STORY interventions that support key digital objectives and customer needs. Having a holistic view of the organization’s current digital state and the capabilities needed to advance its digital agenda are crucial for a successful transformation.

Digital is driving new expectations from IT organizations and making CxOs rethink how IT should operate. IT leaders are required to transform into Digital leaders and become more customercentric in designing and launching new digital capabilities. They are also required to integrate capabilities and best practices across legacy and born-digital assets through simplified operations and delivery.

A Digitally Transformed enterprise is connected, collaborative, and supported by real-time data & analytics. It is empowered by workforce with high digital capabilities and fluency. It is also supported by strategies, culture, policies, and processes that are agile, predictive and consistent.

Should digital transformation be people centered to drive maximum results for the organization?

The answer is a big YES. Companies need to assess the digital maturity of the organization. We need to connect people to the digital transformation program.

We need to create Digital Champions within the organization and get them engaged. If people are not engaged, no program will be successful. It is also important for leaders to enhance their digital fluency.

Where does an organization start in bringing innovation?

The leadership and especially the CEOs must take charge. There is no scope for lethargy. There was a recent survey conducted on the CEOs’ priority towards digital transformation. 90% of the CEOs mentioned that they believe that the digital economy will impact their industry.

But guess what? Only 15% of those CEOs were executing a digital strategy within their organizations. The question to all the CEOs or all the SMEs is do you want to be a part of those 15% or do you want to be a part of the remaining companies, most of which are currently struggling.

CEOs need to be a part of those 15% as

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soon as possible. That is where the digital fluency comes into play. One must work towards 4Ds – Discover the goals of the business based on where the value is shifting. This is especially important in the post-Covid era because the business goals are shifting each day. Once they discover the business goals, they should move towards the next D – Design.

The leadership needs to bring in digital champions within the organizations to lead the transformation program. Unlike IT, digital is a business enabler. As an enabler, it must create a new revenue stream. Once the companies designed the transformation program, comes the third D – Deliver. Organization needs to deliver the change though an enabling ecosystem. At the same time, it is important to remember the fourth D – De-risking. If companies are not derisking, they will struggle in the long run.

The leadership team needs to have the vision and also the fluency to understand or figure out the ‘low hanging fruits’ and work towards areas they need to address first. Companies cannot change everything at one go. Companies should embrace digital and then they can follow the 4D model. Most of the successful digital transformation programs across the globe have followed this 4D model.

What is the role of senior leadership?

Enterprise leaders who want to position their organizations for growth & success in this digital era should set the following goals: ♦ Use digital technologies to augment human capabilities & reinvent operating models. ♦ Transform relevant organization & business facing processes. ♦ Take the opportunity to redefine jobs and organization structure. ♦ Engage employees and make them partners in building the digital enterprise.

Your views on the expanse of digital transformation in the pre & post Covid era…

In the pre-Covid era, digital was extremely important. 5-6 years back when the digital transformation process started, it was being viewed as an optional initiative. I used to have a lot of

interactions with business owners across the industry. One question I asked them was while being seated in the room, are you connected with your customer data?

Are you connected with your business data? Are you connected with your employees? Do you know what your customers’ priorities are? A lot of them were shocked receiving the stream of questions as these concerns were never a part of their agenda at that point in time. My response to them would be that you have a mobile phone with you, do you have the data on your mobile phone because digital transformation or a digital enterprise is all about taking decisions based on business data and facts. Wherever you are, you need to connect with your key data. If you are unable to do so, you are not running a digital enterprise. In the pre-Covid era, it was not understood well. In short, in post Covid, we are moving in a connectionless & touchless hybrid world.

The organizations need to embrace this change as quickly as possible to lead the next wave of growth.

During the Covid lockdown, a global organization’s HR team needed to access a database, and by that time they did not realize that they did not have connectivity to the server to fetch information. They had to visit office during the peak Covid wave to access the employee data. This example can now clearly ring the bell in the ears of the CEOs that digital today is not a choice but a MUST to be in the business. Business continuity process has completely transformed in the past one year. What Covid has done for all of us is that it has offered a level playing field for organizations. The ones who can take the leap fast will get the early mover advantage and often, they will succeed.

How can organizations assess digital maturity? How important it is before even embarking the journey?

The journey to enhance the digital maturity of an organization happens in phases and one can’t expect overnight changes in their organizations. Even though many organizations do not know what a digitally matured version of themselves will ultimately look like, it should not stop the process from beginning. Digital maturity is the

COVER STORY process which defines how to respond appropriately to the emerging digital competitive environment.

Digital maturity works on multiple performance indicators, including revenue growth, time to market, cost efficiency, product

quality, and customer satisfaction. A recent study revealed that India’s digital maturity has increased from 33.5% in 2018 to 55.3 % in 2020, while globally the numbers rose from 23% to 39.2%, with the Asia Pacific & Japan (APJ)

region having almost similar numbers.

Digital transformation maturity can be assessed on various factors viz. Barriers, Strategy, Culture, Talent Development & Leadership skills.

Sandeep Raut, Digital Transformation, Analytics Big Data, Mobility & IoT Evangelist “Bring customer experience at the center stage than technology.”

From capability perspective, how would you evaluate the correct technology and the correct solution for the mundane tasks in supply chain verticals?

Technology is just an enabler. What you want to achieve is more important.

There are three things to evaluate: first & foremost, whatever data you have, does this technology help you improve the quality, consistency, or completeness of available data? That is the biggest problem I have seen in digital transformation. Many a times, data is not available. Consolidating all that data together is a huge task. Second is the technology should increase visibility and transparency across the supply chain.

If you automate the mundane task, it will ultimately improve the visibility.

The third aspect is the ability to store data, and then can you predict trends or prepare better for the future? Upgrading digital platforms, collecting data, and then sharing with the stakeholders or the consumers is the gamechanger. If people do not have data to play around, that’s not going to take you anywhere. Going further, I would like to add that exploit digital twin concept in supply chain, so you can track all your assets & shipments and apply predictive analysis to reduce downtime.

What are your views on Blockchain in Manufacturing

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supply chain?

Blockchain is still at a nascent stage.

Blockchain offers transparency and traceability. Traceability is the biggest factor in supply chain. Most people who would want to use Blockchain, they will have increased traceability of materials, which will eventually reduce the paperwork and improve visibility & compliance. The Blockchain enables entities to digitally transfer money and other assets directly, securely and near instantaneously.

The Blockchain reduces the settlement window from few days to maybe a few hours. All the financial industry is based on managing that window. An international transfer could take as long as five days to settle, during which the counterparty can fail, or the exchange rate can change, or you can have a credit risk. Lots of people, working on managing that risk which is completely reduced, or even eliminated, and all those people and technologies that manage that risk are becoming irrelevant.

It is understood that close to 70% of digital transformation efforts may find failure. How do we ensure that we will be successful?

As we all know that many of these initiatives fail. Everyone must row in the same direction. If people are having cultural issues and everyone starts rowing in the different direction, the boat will

not move at all. Culturally people should align, and the board of directors need to step in and ensure that everyone rows in the same direction. Many organizations get overwhelmed because they start with everything at one go such as BIG BANG approach. Digital Transformation is a series of initiatives that address the process of using digital technologies to radically change a business so it can respond faster & change how you grab opportunities with new business models and deliver value to customers. This must be driven by the CXOs top down to avoid any culture change challenges, and all the departments and all the employees should embrace it with a goal. It involves improving your customer experience, optimizing your operations & adopting new digital business models.

One needs to go for Step-by-Step digital transformation strategy. Best thing is to start small. Start with one product, one machine and one factory at a time. Learn from the data collected and analyze the results generated. Once you are successful, then evangelize it.

Market it to internal as well as external customers because they need to know what success is. Then you expand it to a wider base.

How can companies bring Human element in Digital Transformation?

It is easy to get wrapped by technology but

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COVER STORY without considering human element the transformation process will fail. CEOs are taking a digital-first approach to change the business. Digital transformation cannot thrive unless your organization has a culture that is willing and able to embrace it. Organization-wide adoption requires teams to change their attitude, automate the processes, shift their thinking, and reject the status quo. People are engaged by people. Productive and satisfied employees who like their work, go out of the way to satisfy customers.

There are three important aspects to this: • Know your customers – Customers are not just records but they are also humans, know their behavior • Engage with employees – Elaborate on what is in it for me, people need to know what the change is and how it will benefit them.

• Focus on human collaboration, learning, and innovation for digital which yields better ideas, better results.

It requires all 4 pillars of the organization - Customers, Employees, Suppliers & Partners to collaborate and communicate with each other.

Digitization is by no means dehumanization. It is 20% technology but 80% human touch. Without a strong involvement and without taking the human element into account on all levels, digital projects are going to fail. The best results will occur when technology and

humans collaborate to create an entire ecosystem, which technology alone cannot achieve.

Would you be benefiting from legacy systems, or one needs to implement advanced technologies?

It is no brainer now that with fast moving digital age, change is the only constant.

Full implementation of wide-ranging technologies will help a lot.

Digital transformation is like going from caterpillar to butterfly. But if you do it wrong, then all you are getting is a faster caterpillar. Allow technologies to gape you from your source to destination.

Do not just try to change or upgrade the technology, just for the sake of it. Think about the supply chain 4.0. companies need to be agile, flexible, and faster.

Four organizational pillars – Customers, Employees, Partners, and Suppliers are then supported with this technology upgrade or organizational strategic operations and technologies.

Why Going Digital is more important now after the Pandemic?

2020 has been a year like no other in the past. With pandemic forcing us to live our lives more online, organizations have had to transform the delivery of digital services and experiences at an accelerated rate. As COVID force-closed companies

and economies around the globe for months, businesses are considering mapping the customer journey more now than ever before. You can offer a customer a highly intuitive experience, but if you cannot deliver the required service to the customer’s satisfaction and expectation then you lose the customer.

This is more important now, particularly when the people are so reliant on services being delivered digitally in every area like school/college education to retail. If these interactions do not go smoothly then the impact on our livelihood is more serious. With the digital age, the consumer has become a superman and this pandemic has Upped the customer expectations, which has created a new set of challenges for marketers and digital teams. The first is the need for faster delivery. Businesses need to update consumers immediately about the availability of products or services. Second is the quick online support. Customers expect to receive clear answers and solutions quickly.

Digital leaders will need to keep an eye on such changing customer needs, be ready with staff members that can adapt and respond quickly and build digital platforms that are flexible and scalable to meet the demand for more engaging experiences and frictionless digital services. COVID pandemic has pressured many businesses to go digital.

Dinesh PA, Global Head of Engineering and Product – Director Supply Chain Technology, Kimberly-Clark “In 5-10 years from now, every business will be a technology business.

Unless you invest in technology, you will be like a dinosaur.”

How technology has been shaping the way we conduct and run our businesses as opposed to five years back?

Technology is transforming businesses

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in two ways: taking out mundane tasks that people perform in the business and automating them while also propelling growth & customer experience. In one of my previous organizations, we used to get

lot of invoices from suppliers through fax & emails. Post receiving such invoices, we used to have heaps of papers to be scanned and manual processes. We used to have 10-12 people to assess these papers’

COVER STORY authenticity with the Purchase Order, authorizing payments to a channel. Now these tasks have been automated by way of Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

The accuracy levels are 99% and above.

This business process has today become totally technology driven. The question now arises is how many mundane tasks can be automated? Similar to this, there are many low hanging fruits, which are automated and it plateau’s out after a while. However, there is no limit on the growth and customer experience side as technology will help you to continuously innovate.

Another example I would like to share with you is of Flipkart. This incident is about a couple of years back.

With the intervention of technology and data insights, when Flipkart wanted to deliver goods to their end customer, in the core areas of Bengaluru for instance, people wanted their shipments between 10 am – 4 pm during weekdays. In the periphery of Bengaluru, they wanted shipments during weekends or during evening hours on the weekdays. This was because at periphery of Bangalore, which are IT areas, both the spouses were typically working and not available during daytime. To cater to customers’ specific requirements, Flipkart changed its supply chain model where the delivery agents would service the core areas in the morning and at the periphery areas during the weekends or evening hours of the weekdays as desired. This shift was only possible due to the right intervention of technology and without that, one would not be able to reposition workforce.

There is an interesting example cited in HBR. A lot of people buy beer at Walmart, and they also buy diapers.

Walmart technology team witnessed the strange correlation between the two.

They may sound very confusing. Some time ago, Wal-Mart decided to combine the data from its loyalty card system with that from its point-of-sale systems.

The former provided Wal-Mart with demographic data about its customers, the latter told it where, when and what those customers bought. Once combined, the data was mined extensively, and many correlations appeared. Some of these were obvious; people who buy gin are also likely to buy tonic. They

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often also buy lemons. However, one correlation stood out like a sore thumb because it was so unexpected. On Friday afternoons, young American males who buy diapers (nappies) also have a predisposition to buy beer. No one had predicted that result, so no one would ever have even asked the question in the first place. Hence, this is an excellent example of the difference between data mining and querying. After seeing the results of the data mining, Wal-Mart moved the beer next to the diapers and beer sales went up. The inference is that in 5-10 years from now, every business will be a technology business. Unless you invest in technology, you will be like a dinosaur.

Technology transformation faces obstacles. How do you manage the change?

Our customers are not traditional today.

Let me give you an example… all of us prefer home delivery of food and want it fast. Speed and customer experience are the essence here. Service vs cost paradigm we always grapple with in supply chain domain. Unfortunately, due to legacy systems that we have in our organizations, rapid change is extremely difficult or rather impossible.

During Covid if a company didn’t have a website or a deliver to home model, one had to rapidly innovate and figure out innovative channels to do business. If companies are waiting for legacy software companies to give you upgrades, it is going to come in 6 months or 1 year. By that time, your competitors would have taken the big leap and the market share.

Cloud not just gives us infrastructure, it helps companies to do things fast. If you want to grow with changing times, adapt digital technologies, there are no two ways about it. Companies need to figure out the processes which need immediate attention when it comes to digital technologies, and which are Customer First in nature.

one platform. In this also, there will be lot of products within Uber such as pricing for the consumers, payments for the drivers, their incentives, etc. Companies need to have a clear vision before starting off their digital transformation journey.

It may not be 100% right. The idea is to assimilate all the functionalities so that it accelerates the entire delivery experience.

How would you like companies to embark on the digital transformation journey?

The most important criteria is that the board and senior executives of the company should see a desperate need for change and drive it from the top.

The second is to hire real good digital talent in the organization who can make a sense of what needs to be done and really listen to them to drive change.

Culturally it is not going to be easy for many organizations, which have always done things in certain ways and the leadership must be relentless to drive the message that this change is real and cannot be wished away.

What would be your preference – is it platform vs product? What would be the right vision?

Let me explain this with an example…

UBER is a platform connecting the drivers on one side to the consumers on the other side. Everything is seamless in

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UNDER-40 SUPER ACHIEVERS

Supply Chain Control Tower:

Old Wine in New Bottle?

Nowadays in most of the discussions around supply chain, there is a mention of control tower as a magic wand for solving supply chain issues. While there is a class of professionals who see a lot of value in it but there is another class which views it with skepticism as old wine in new bottle. There is another class of professionals who do not understand and think of it as something very sophisticated and needs a lot of investment. Sandeep Chatterjee, Associate Director – Technology Consulting, Deloitte, offers insights into the changing paradigms of supply chain control towers…

Sandeep Chatterjee comes with expertise in key areas including supply chain management, business process reengineering, emerging countries enablement, network optimization, ERP Implementation and ERP Footprint Review across multiple industries and geographies. He holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode, and a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical), Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur (formerly Bengal Engineering College). Sandeep is also the Member of Board of Governors, IIM Kozhikode & the CEO and Chairman of International Supply Chain Education Alliance (ISCEA).

Essential Elements of a Control Tower Start by determining the applicable use case based on priorities and business challenges...  Voice of the customer  Factory control  Global trade and customs  Production planning

 Synchronized planning  Quality and recall mgmt.  Customer service  Logistics

 Sourcing and procurement  Technical operations  Aftermarket mgmt.  Supply chain risk

Modules

Functional components of a Control Tower are enabled by technical layers, including: Functional components

Components

Process and operating model

 End-to-end visibility  Exception mgmt.  Scenario analysis

Technical layers  Optimized intelligent response  Presentation  Analytics  Self-driving execution  Decision support  Data Integration and ingestion  Communication

 Security and admin  Data sources

Ingrain the solution into the business by creating processes and shaping the operating model to sustain the capability, through:  Capabilities assessment  Process design  Op model design

 Governance structure  Communication strategy  Training

(Source: Deloitte)

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UNDER-40 SUPER ACHIEVERS

A

S per the Merriam-Webster dictionary, control tower is an elevated glass-enclosed structure which has an unobstructed view of a landing field and from which air traffic may be controlled usually by radio. To extend it to business, it is an end-to-end solution that equips organizations with new enterprise capabilities including real-time data visibility, proactive alerts, prescriptive insights, and self-driving execution of the supply chain.

Having a cockpit view of the organization is imperative for any CXO. But what typically used to happen in earlier days was it was more of a reactive mechanism. Organizations used to collect data (there was no mechanism to collect it real time) and do a post-mortem once the event had occurred. This was a mechanism to avoid the past mistakes but in business no two scenarios are identical. As supply chains become more adaptive (mix of efficient and responsive), the need of the hour is to change course real time once we observe certain anomalies in the chain.

Some of the perceived benefits of a control tower are as follows: ♦ It is an end-to-end solution that provides real-time alerts, strategic insights and enhanced supply chain effectiveness ♦ It enhances new enterprise

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capabilities by facilitating a new, better way of working, and often requires new processes and organization structures ♦ It breaks traditional functional silos by integrating disparate data sources, processes, and extended supply chain to deliver real-time connectivity, enhanced visibility, and prescriptive insights ♦ It has the capability to use analytics to enable self-driving execution, thanks to the huge technological breakthrough over the years wherein any system can talk to any other system in a cost-effective manner.

It uses science-driven algorithms and cognitive feedback loops to automatically kick-off certain actions when tolerance in a metric is violated.

While we understand all this, there are some prevailing myths around this…

Myth 1: This is a room with big screens It is as simple as a dashboard on your hand-held device which provides an enterprise view.

Myth 2: It is fancy dashboard There is an intelligence built in wherein the supply chain can make autonomous decisions based on the cognitive feedback loop.

Myth 3: It needs investment in technology It is all about connecting the disparate systems and plugging in AI and ML rules.

All these are now affordable given the huge strides in technology.

Myth 4: It will solve all my supply chain problems While there are some rules which are selfexecuting, but it provides prescriptive insights for which a human brain must make a decision. We are better equipped to make an informed decision which may go either way.

IN SHORT In today’s dynamic business environment where supply chains compete and not companies, Control Towers equip us with the insights needed to make an informed decision in real-time. The pandemic has accelerated some of the digital initiatives as companies are now managing a global supply chain remotely. Having said that, the cost of technology needs to come down further to make it affordable for small enterprises!!!

“If supply chain had an arch enemy, it would be called “Bad Communication.” ~EverythingSupplyChain.com

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OPINION

LOGISTICAL CHALLENGES

AND SOLUTIONS The current pandemic impact clearly shows that the long-awaited structural reforms to make logistics a formal, streamlined sector have become more necessary than ever. The pandemic has exacerbated the sector’s long-term problems, write Dr. K. Ganesh, and Ramanath KB, Consultants, India.

Dr. K. Ganesh is a supply chain consultant with more than 16 years of experience. He has graduated in Production Engineering from Annamalai University with the university first rank. He pursued his post graduation in Industrial Engineering at NIT Trichy and secured college first.

He then moved to IIT Madras where he obtained his doctoral degree in Supply Chain.

T

HE COVID-19 pandemic continues to hamper business operations in every sector and every part of India. Logistics is hit hard, and without logistics, only cottage industries can function—and not even all of them. So far, the pace of recovery is not entirely clear. It is predicted that India’s logistics sector would expand at a CAGR of more than 10%, from $200 billion in early 2020 to at least $320 billion in 2025. The sector may still reach this level in four years’ time, but that is more uncertain now.

The picture is constantly evolving,

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Ramanath KB is a supply chain consultant with more than 7 years of experience in the field. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Anna University and post graduation in Supply Chain from SP Jain School of Global Management.

but now, as always, there are things that we know and things that we do not know.

The known unknowns, such as the pace of the recovery, will become less opaque over time. No doubt the sector also faces unknown unknowns, but that is always true, so that should not prevent Indian companies from assessing the problems and acting to correct them.

THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 AND THE NEAR-TERM PROGNOSIS One thing we do know is the pandemic’s immediate impact on the key functions

of the logistics sector: warehousing and transportation. Times are still hard for both these functions. In the near term, estimating demand, allocating capacity, and distributing products across sectors and regions are difficult challenges.

WAREHOUSING Even in good times, very sophisticated and difficult inventory management decisions are needed to manage inventory in warehouses effectively. Ordering and maintaining appropriate quantities at warehouses is harder than ever because traditional forecasting techniques are

OPINION now ineffective: experienced buyers oversee and make decisions to purchase materials, but that experience now counts for less in a radically changed country and world. Given these strong headwinds, most companies should consider shrinking their product mix to allocate warehousing to the most essential SKUs. Producers of nonessentials, in particular, should continue to minimize their inventories, which significantly increase their holding costs and clog up valuable warehouse space.

But, for essential items, the ongoing uncertainty around supply means that it might make more sense for producers to keep inventories high than to risk stockouts. In any case, just-in-time approaches to scheduling may not work, at least in the near future.

Meanwhile, India’s warehousing industry may enjoy higher demand as producers shift their focus away from China and towards other Asian countries.

But one thing is certain: warehouses must reduce the amount of human contact involved in handling materials, so demand for innovative packaging and materials-handling processes is rising throughout the supply chain. Companies that lease space in warehouses demand more streamlined and automated processes. Those that have their own facilities must implement such processes as well.

TRANSPORTATION Trucks dominate transportation in India’s logistics sector. However, COVID-19 has restricted free flow of goods by road across India, increasing the use of suboptimal routes. Meanwhile, a shortage of drivers has increased truck-rental costs by a staggering 56% to 74%. For these and other reasons, logistics functions must remain open to all options during and after the pandemic, so they will have to act nimbly. In the near term, strategically choosing when and how to use LTLs, FTLs and milk runs is one of the key decisions that organizations need to make efficiently – the principles that guide these decisions in the preCOVID-19 era have now been rendered invalid.

One saving grace of the current crisis is that it has given India its best opportunity to shift towards multimodal transport. The government could encourage the transport of aggregated assortments of goods by rail not only to promote cheaper, faster multimodal freight transport but also to ease the pressure on road networks.

PAIN POINTS The top three external pain points in logistics function are the small number of formal transport companies that can use efficient technologies, India’s overstrained highways, and a severe shortage of drivers. Although the

pandemic has exacerbated all these problems, individual companies can do relatively little to solve them.

Companies can do much more about the top internal pain points identified: the failure of most logistics functions to use best practices, as well as the insufficient degree of coordination and collaboration among the materials-management, warehousing, and transport functions.

Overcoming these two problems could help India’s economy, and the companies within it, to recover from the pandemic and prosper in the next normal. The solutions involve not only technology but also organizational structure and practices.

TECHNOLOGICAL CHALLENGES, OPPORTUNITIES, AND STRUCTURAL REFORMS For as we have seen, COVID-19 has devastatingly revealed the weaknesses and inefficiencies of India’s current logistics system. Only a shift to more formal, technologically capable organizations will allow the sector to meet the challenges yet to come. The pandemic has made agility, and demand for technological sophistication, a necessity for survival, not just a competitive advantage. It is estimated that advanced technology could not only reduce logistics costs by as much as 25% but also help companies offer better service and free up internal

COVID-19 has devastatingly revealed the weaknesses and inefficiencies of India’s current logistics system. Only a shift to more formal, technologically capable organizations will allow the sector to meet the challenges yet to come. The pandemic has made agility, and demand for technological sophistication, a necessity for survival, not just a competitive advantage. It is estimated that advanced technology could not only reduce logistics costs by as much as 25% but also help companies offer better service and free up internal capacity for other purposes. But almost all of the small, informal logistics players in the country’s supply chains (for instance, the firms that operate 75% of India’s trucks) cannot adapt to rapid technological change. Even many of the larger logistics companies will find it a challenge. All of these organizations, large and small, face serious and possibly mortal threats. supplychaintribe.com

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OPINION

capacity for other purposes. But almost all the small, informal logistics players in the country’s supply chains (for instance, the firms that operate 75% of India’s trucks) cannot adapt to rapid technological change. Even many of the larger logistics companies will find it a challenge. All these organizations, large and small, face serious and possibly mortal threats. Many technologies are transforming logistics. Most of them are already in use around the world and fairly mature. These are the most important ones:  Integrated logistics platforms are online marketplaces where companies buy and sell logistics services. Telematics helps companies monitor vehicles and cargo digitally, in real time.  Digital logistics control towers serve as nerve centers for supplychain operations by capturing data at all levels, providing end-to-end visibility, and facilitating strategic decision making.  Blockchain helps companies

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develop systems to verify and rate the transactions that truckers and shippers complete, so manufacturers can generate smart contracts that automatically pay vendors when shipments reach their destinations.  Cognitive logistics process automation uses artificial intelligence to automate responses to changes in logistics networks by processing a range of data on the status, health, and performance of supply chains and giving stakeholders real-time recommendations.  Real-time replanning makes supply chains visible from end to end and fully integrates them into IT systems.  Augmented - reality devices superimpose computerized data on the user’s field of vision, improving pickup rates and reducing picking errors.

• Exoskeletons—robotic clothes— increase the physical capacity of their users, cut the number of injuries, and raise productivity.

• Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs)

navigate through warehouses and move racks to pickers, pick and move items from baskets, deliver shipments to packers, and the like. AMRs can reroute themselves dynamically when they meet obstacles; the more common automated guided vehicles (AGVs) cannot.

IN ESSENCE… Some solutions do not necessarily involve high tech. To give consumers confidence in the sector, for example, companies must change the way they handle materials, to ensure minimal contact by loading staff and truck drivers. Training and monitoring the loading staff will be relatively easy. Educating drivers to follow safety protocols will be a lot harder, since most of them, in this predominantly informal sector, are uneducated and digitally illiterate. Digital innovations might therefore be necessary to monitor drivers, and that could be a problem for smaller firms.

Celerity India Marketing Services Email: tech@celerityin.com | Mobile: 79771 05913 Website: www.supplychaintribe.com