In this issue Student Articles Crossword Puzzle Do You Know What’s New
Volume 05, Issue 01, January, 2016
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“Logistics is the ball and chain of Armored Warfare.”– Heinz Guderian
Is GST a mirage? Road transportation accounts for sixty percent of the freight traffic in India. This sector has been a primary bottleneck in driving the economic growth due to multiple taxes charged by authorities at inter-state check points and various toll booths throughout the country. The truck drivers in India clock an average of 250-280 km per day much below the world average of 400 km per day and far below the 700 km per day mark of the average distance covered by a truck driver in USA. The prevailing tax structure in the country is quite complex comprising of central imposed taxes in the form of customs duty, CST, excise duty and varying state imposed tariffs in the form of octroi, entertainment tax and VAT. Implementation of Goods and Services Tax (India) Bill, 2014 (GST) will integrate this multi-layered tax system into a single unified system thus improving the ease of moving goods between different states by reducing transportation cycle times, minimizing cost, enhancing supply chain innovations, strengthening exportimport, less bureaucratic impediments and paper works thereby enabling logistics sector to reach its potential in terms of service and growth. Some major advantages by adopting a unified GST include 1) enabling logistic service providers to deliver goods more efficiently and optimised delivery times thus leading to reduction in delivery expenses and lowering the final price of the goods; 2) decline in unethical practices whereby business and logistic providers evade tax - hence a shift from tax saving to efficiency;
3) currently dominating unorganized service providers to witness emergence of organized service providers as multiple taxes will no longer be added costs for businesses; and 4) logistics service providers likely to adopt sophisticated technologies and training manpower to increase efficiency. GST roll out will enable business organizations to establish large warehouses in key strategic locations and few regional distribution hubs (hub & spoke model) as decrease in tax burden will reduce the need for widespread warehouses at several locations. Smaller warehouses will amalgamate to form large efficient warehouses with state-of-the-art infrastructure, planning and well trained manpower which is not feasible with scattered warehouses. Uniform tax regime will play a crucial role in enabling the country to realise its potential as a global trading hub. Progress in overall logistics sector from the perspective of trade would be pivotal in determining the success of ‘Make in India’ campaign launched by Government of India. Inter-state trades will become taxneutral enabling the country to become a single market place without state borders. Thus, as the regulatory reforms proposed in the GST bill unleash an opportunity to re-engineer logistics, transportation networks and design innovative supply-chain models for reducing cost and increasing efficiency get shaped. However, for now GST remains to be a fantasy. ~ Ashwathej Purushothaman (13JGBS)
Steps to a successful supply chain collaboration In a collaboration companies within a particular supply chain work towards mutual goals by sharing their ideas, knowledge, rewards, information, etc. Below are listed the major steps for successful supply chain collaboration. The first step towards successful supple chain collaboration is collaborating in places where both the participants have strong hands. It must not be for compensating something that one company may lack resulting in the utter failure of the project. Both the collaborators must be sure that they have enough infrastructure and facilities which is required for a successful collaboration. It is important both the participants must be able to reap equal benefits from the project. There is a fair chance that one of the collaborator benefits from the project more than the other which might result in a win-lose situation. To make it a win-win situation there must be effective management for the profit sharing between both the parties. Collaborating with the right parties is of immense importance. The largest company may not always be the best partner. One must be selecting partners based on capability, common goals and value potential, etc. One must be taking care if the other partner also shares the same goals and interest as you are and if they are also able to provide as much as you are to the project. One must be investing in the right infrastructure and right people. There are a lot of hurdles the company needs to overcome such as the cultural gap,
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http://issuu.com/octaphi/docs (Continued.) different types of terminology, etc. or passing through different organizational levels within a company. So be sure that the company you are collaborating with is able to provide the right kind of infrastructure and environment that you are looking for. Establishing an effective and robust joint management system is also very important. Instead of making one big matric for the performance management several small matrices dealing with all the basic concerns must be formed and they should be analysed in order to get the better picture about the outcome of collaboration. Instead of having small term collaborations companies must be focussing on long term relationships. After crossing the initial hurdles they must still be putting the same kind of effort throughout. They performance matrices must be joint effort from both the parties to make it more successful. Even though a successful collaboration is not easy and simple the outcome is worth all the effort. There must be a huge number of hurdles one should be able to overcome with utmost effort but that’s all worth it. ~ Jyoti Kumari (15JGBS)
Do You Know? Singapore is ranked No.1 Logistics Hub in Asia (Logistics Performance Index, World Bank, 2014). Singapore’s Changi Airport is one of Asia’s largest cargo airports and is served by over 6,500 weekly flights connecting to 280 cities in 60 countries, handling 2 million tonnes of cargo annually. Amazon has built out an infrastructure that includes 145 warehouses around the world (84 in the United States, four in Canada, 29 in Europe, 15 in China, 10 in Japan, and seven in India), which collectively account for 40 million square feet of space. During 2015, there were 11 transactions worth $100 million or more that involved the consolidation of third-party logistics providers. This marks the highest number of such deals in a single year since 1999. By contrast, there were just three and five such transactions in 2013 and 2014, respectively (Armstrong & Associates).
Editorial Board: Jyoti Kumari, Monal Pandey, Aayushi Pratap, Saroj Koul. Jindal Global Business School
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ACROSS: 1) A business selling directly to consumers. 3) It involves a number of activities including call centre management, sales force automation, and direct selling. 4) Buying raw materials and components from a supplier rather than making it yourself. 7) A unique identification number (or alphanumeric string) that defines an item for inventory purposes. 9) The percent of product produced that is not defective. 10)A graphical project planning tool that shows horizontal bars that depict the beginning and ending time for each task. DOWN: 2) Quality control charts that display the number of defects per sample. 5) It is defined as a failure rate of 3.4 parts per million or 99.99966% good. Six Sigma involves the application of five steps: define; measure; analyse; improve and control steps. 6) A document used to acknowledge the receipt of products. 8) A graph tool often used as a brainstorming approach for identifying the root causes of a problem. Also called a Cause-and-Effect or Fishbone Diagram. ~ Saurabh Sao, (14JGBS)
What’s New? As can be seen, 52% of vendors believe that the level of chargebacks will grow over that period, versus just 33% of retailers that see things that way. Meanwhile, a solid 44% of retailers actually believe the level of chargebacks will decline over those 5 years, versus just 13% of vendors - two very different perspectives. (Source: SC Digest)
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