Student Articles Puzzle Student Feedback
Volume 11, Issue 01, April 2021.
Reach us at
Feedback at octaphi@jgu.edu.in
Artificial Intelligence will be rampant in the digital supply chain ~Dave Waters
With 1300 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and the current consumption pace, we will deplete these resources in 40 years. By focusing on reducing oil consumption in personal transportation, we might achieve our energy sustainability goal. Global climate change is the second great challenge in front of us. The increasing amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels leads to excessive heat trapped in the earth's atmosphere. Due to this, average global temperatures are increasing, leading to a rise in sea levels, and extreme weather conditions in many parts of the world. So there is a need to switch from the conventional mode of using fossil fuel to fulfil our personal transportation requirements to clean, secure and smart energy vehicles driven from electricity or hydrogen. These are sustainable energy source as long as these are derived from Renewable energy sources. Electrical vehicles (EV) are more energy efficient in comparison to IC engines. They were invented in 1895, approximately 60 years before the gasoline-powered cars. Almost 40 per cent of the cars sold in the US in 1900 were Electric cars. At the start of the 20th century, many companies developed Hybrid Electric vehicles and IC Engine & Electric motor were used in either parallel or series to generate the required or supplement power. Gasoline-powered vehicles slowly gained more popularity than EV's high cost, low power capacity, lack of electricity accessibility, limited electricity range between recharge, and high time to recharge the battery. Thus a need for alternate sustainable energy resources and EV are considered most apt. Over the years, Automobile companies have spent billions of dollars in research, development, and deployment of EVs and significantly improved their technology. The slow and steady increase in basic infrastructure is also helping in increasing the demand for EVs. Government policies such as tax incentive
for companies and consumer, manufacturing of advanced technology products and favourable policies to set-up extensive production facilities have helped a lot. EVs, HEVs and PHEVs are the type of vehicles in the market using electricity for transportation. EVs are driven by electricity and uses a pack of rechargeable batteries to get power. HEVs (Hybrid Electric Vehicle), on the other hand, are a combination of IC Engine and using regenerative braking energy stored in the system. The PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric vehicle) uses both ICE mechanical power and battery-packed electrical power to power it. Companies like Toyota, Ford, GM and Nissan are already in the market for two decades. Due to the surge in fuel prices and environmental concerns among customers, we can see increasing demand for HEV, PHEV and EV cars in the market. Although Tesla is leading the market in Electric vehicle sales, Volkswagen, Volvo, and Hyundai are trying to close the big gap. Source: US Oil Demand by End‐Use (2025)
The Electric Vehicle (EV) industry is doubling every year. In 2019, out of total 80 million automobiles sold worldwide included 2.3 million EVs. Also, the first million units of EV got sold from 2010 to 2017, but the next one million took just one and half years. The compounding effect predicts that by the year 2030, 30 per cent of automobiles would be EV. This is making OEM of automobiles shift from traditional automobiles to EV. While EVs provide sustainability solutions, it allows curbing petroleum price, CO2 emission, transportation cost, and solve the unemployment problem. An EV's heart is its battery and contributes majorly for the price, say for two-wheeler's 70 per cent and four-wheeler's 50 per cent. The most common is a Lithium-Cobalt based battery. Lithium gives movement to electron,
and the cobalt cools down the battery temperature. A battery's performance is measured by its power storage capacity in kilowatt-hour (kWh); an average equivalent petroleum-based car will run approximately 200 km after consumption of 35 kWh of electricity in one go per the current average standard car. High temperature adversely affects batteries' life and efficiency, and high resistance causes less electricity to drive the motor. India's hot climate is not suitable for it; a battery with better cooling features will benefit the Indian scenario. The next significant hurdle in implementing EVs in India is the absence of an electric charging infrastructure. A possible solution could be a public-private partnership. One such example is the development of the charging infrastructure by Ola in Nagpur. The governments should launch policies that people get motivated to buy. Offers like a lucrative discount, least or free road tax, parking free or tolls may be thought. Also, they may heavily penalize polluting cars. All developing countries are criticized for their dependency on conventional energy sources for energy, but this recent development in renewable electricity generation is a good symbol for the Indian EV's future. With the reduction of CO2 emission and coal dependency, it shall ensure India becoming a greener country. Also, the secondary benefit will be saving of enormous amount that the country expends on petroleum import. To further strengthen the monopoly of few countries on EV technology, invest in R&D to develop indigenous battery. Deal with countries where raw materials for a battery like lithium and cobalt are available should be done for being self-dependent in future. Source: Niti Ayaog EV Report, 2020
Do You Know? The average food item travels at least 1500 miles before it gets to your home.
Do you know?
In this issue
OCTANE-The Octaphi Newsletter
To combat the eminent issues of rising pollution, global warming, and depletion of natural resources, Electronic Vehicles (EV's) were invented. This innovative solution (despite its drawbacks) appears to be a pragmatic substitute for conventional cars and further aims to assuage multiple 'global issues'. With the multiple initiatives and policies in India, such as the "National Electric Mobility Mission Plan and Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME)," EVs' growth is expected to pick up. India has a meagre 2600 charging station, eight types of EV offerings, and 261 EV car sales (April-December 2020; a considerable plunge from 1262 last period). Nonetheless, with significant price hikes in fuel (diesel and petrol) over the extant period, EVs present to be lucrative substitutes to all sectors of the Indian economy. Additionally, they have cheaper maintenance, lesser service requirements, and are better for the environment. However, according to multiple sources, their adoption may only be a tenable option once the government and the private sector collate their efforts via creating policies, contributing capital, and fostering efficiency. The two fundamental issues viz. charging requirement – availability gap and range anxiety serve to be the most significant bottlenecks to adoption. The question is, will a greater sales of EVs increase the demand and, in turn, supply of chargers, or will more chargers lure more EV purchases? For example, EVs takes under 8 hours to charge and runs for lower 350 km. What if it runs out on a highway? Will there be nearby charging stations, or are EV's for local use? Further, the expert opinion also states that although the lack of charging infrastructure has come to light, the high prices of these cars (4-5 lakh rupees above average), range anxiety (threat of stopping on a highway), policy flops (Indian government planning to tax non-electric vehicles), lack of private parking (only 40% have access), and many more bottlenecks, are underestimated. Lastly, many critics question whether a pandemic is the right time to steer additional funds towards EV's required infrastructure. Source: inc42.com, 2021
For previous issues visit: http://issuu.com/octaphi/docs
Control Towers (CT) enables effective communication and collaboration with key suppliers and customers. An effective CT sits at the top of the supply chain, identifies problems, analyses the alternatives, takes corrective measures, and facilitates the process of improving efficiency and responsiveness like an orchestration engine that connects physical with digital supply chains. Modern CT integrates different control towers, like CT for logistics, CT for inventory, and their specific supply chain function. A modern CT that enables real-time supply chain planning will be critical for the best-in-class supply chains. The recent report by IDC (2020) supports the fact that technology plays a vital role in digital transformation and CT progression. About 85 per cent of the survey respondents believe that control towers are essential in improving supply chain operations. Sixty per cent of the respondents believe that apart from improving resiliency, it is also essential to optimize the supply chain's operational aspects on a short-term basis to improve the system's efficiency and effectiveness.
Failure of Control Towers in the past: CT has historically failed to find traction with many organizations due to technological limitations of past tools, including the lack of quality data, insufficiency of the analytics engine, and the lack of real-time actions. Modern CTs define true resiliency and are a critical component to organize and integrate information from disparate parts of the organization and then making informed, integrated, and timely decisions. A modern control tower can exist in various forms and functions and help fill the critical gap of the supply chain by improving visibility and resilience to see necessary changes in time to react to them effectively. It can optimize all functions of the supply chain. Source: IDC, 2020
Puzzle: One Smart Move See if you can, moving only 1 bucket, make the pattern above alternate between full and empty buckets.
Elements of Supply Chain Control Tower: SEE: Visibility is a critical factor that enables proactive and accurate mitigating actions. DECIDE: Reactive and predictive analytical capability helps monitor internal activity and correlate it with external events. However, proper analysis of a large volume of data is still a challenge for many manufacturers. ACT: Plays an exceptional role in the supply chain, acts as per strategic plan while developing the tactical operational actions. Aims of Modern Control Tower: include enabling collaboration between the people within and external to the supply chain, leveraging cross-function and crossorganization visibility and the collaboration leads to an effective workflow. There is improvement in customer relations, inventory policies, and service-level tradeoffs by monitoring the supply chains. Also, target reporting and operational dashboards drive intelligent decision-making. Benefits of Modern Control Tower: ability of the supply chain to optimize operations when necessary, or when operational aspects are on a short-term basis, which would impact in the longer term, aids connecting disparate systems to the right data at the right time and in the right place, improves cohesiveness of the entire supply chain operations, enabling intelligent decision-making and allowing optimal reaction in real-time.
ANSWER
Dump the Contents of 2nd into 5th. You have only move one bucket.
Student’s Feedback Corner OCTANE is a must-read newsletter if you are looking to build your acumen and insight in operations. The puzzle section is my personal favourite where I have fun while learning. ~Umesh Kumar Krishnan (JGBS2019) This newsletter provides deep insights on the latest technology transformations in supply chain domain. It has helped me improve my theoretical understanding/in-class performance. ~ Animesh Wasan (SPJIMR)
Editorial Board: Hitesh Gupta Faculty Mentor: Saroj Koul Jindal Global Business School, Delhi NCR Contact us: octaphi@jgu.edu.in