Entering its glorious 5th year, Celerity Supply Chain Tribe Awards event is being hailed as the industry’s most coveted congregation, which not only recognizes and honours young supply chain super stars and super achievers and offers them a poised platform for growth, over the years, it has also become a proven landmark where innovative practices and success stories are celebrated and accredited by industry leaders. Competing with the best in class, this year’s Jury vetted awards have pushed the BAR even HIGHER with every nomination being worthy of achieving recognition. As the supply chain domain is charting the most important course in its growth trajectory in the country with a slew of government measures ably backing the momentum, it’s only pertinent that we select the most outstanding LOGISTICIANS who are READY to take this growth trajectory upwards.
Ed's Note: To read the achievements of the Celerity Under-40 Supply Chain Super Achievers, click here
Here’s presenting a glimpse of the innovations and achievements by these supply chain young talents, who are 30 years of age or younger...
The Celerity 30-Under-30 Supply Chain Superstars 2023
Aaryav Gupta
Aaryav Gupta, Director – Global Business, Pridel Pvt. Ltd.
In 2019, I attended a conference in Singapore where I met a company that manufactures and operates a fleet of unit load devices (ULDs). They wanted to get the ULDs to India for building up the inventory and then export by air. We worked closely with them to improvise on a solution using the Free Trade Warehousing Zone so that the ULDs can come to India and go out without payment of duty. This actually opened new avenues for us to enter into FTWZ vertical and helped to increase the revenues substantially. To top it all, the exposure and learning that I got while working with a global organization and critical timelines was immense and that's something that has actually impacted us big time. This is what I personally believe, don't sell what you have rather work on the problems of the customers and you will have a star product / service. We have made this a culture in our organization to tap new clients by finding solutions to the problems that they might not even know of and that actually helps to make stronger relations with the clients.
Mohammad Adil Akhtar
Mohammad Adil Akhtar, Management Consultant, KPMG Global Services Pvt. Ltd.
While working on a Route Optimization project for a leading FMCG client, I realized that the objective of transportation cost reduction is incomplete without considering outbound load optimization. Considering the need for automation, I developed a truck load optimization tool that allocates packages to individual vehicle based on weight and volume constraints. The optimized solution leads to automated truck load building and helps in bringing visibility to truck utilization. I conceptualized and strategized the requirement and developed a working POC model with advance Analytical capabilities.
I developed the tool to integrate data from multiple sources and customize to multiple scenarios. Since I was working on an industry agnostic tool, there was a need to add multiple custom based scenarios to accommodate different scenarios. I worked on the product right from inception to final delivery where at times I required collaboration with different technical teams and understand the limitations of different tools. I was able to successfully deploy the model for a large FMCG brand, leading to improved utilization of truck capacity by 20%.
Madhumita Banerjee
Madhumita Banerjee, Associate Manager – Supply Chain Practice, Tredence Inc.
I got the opportunity to lead a first-of-a-kind project on service level prediction for one of the largest FMCG conglomerates (>$100 billion annual revenue) to address the problem of incremental customer penalty costs on account of non-fulfillment of agreed order levels grossing $98 million per annum. This resulted in lost contribution and exposure to reputational and customer service risks.
The project expectations required to evaluate the drivers of order failures such as uneven inventory distribution management, operational inefficiencies in the value chain including excessive slack time in material movement, and inadequate third party vendor oversight resulting substandard performance in distribution. The main challenge included non-homogenous data across multiple on-premises and cloud platforms, human dependencies in tracking the performance metrices and non-standardized change management processes. I led a team to ideate, develop, and implement an effective prediction model (based on machine learning algorithms) involving extrapolatory data analysis on historical data and defining event-tracers and data markers. Individual responsibilities included owing the project deliverables and accountability for milestone adherence, partnering with functional SMEs knowledge transfer and management, and obtaining timely feedback from the client on the prediction model for creating a fit for business capability. The solution resulted in generating actionable insights in advance of order date by four weeks, which led to cost savings by reduction in possible penalty costs to the tune of $48 million per annum. The success of the solution led to its adoption and deployment across the entire enterprise.
As customer service continues to evolve, this kind of projects will set a new benchmark for excellence in the FMCG world, demonstrating the true power of technology, collaboration and strategic foresight.
Manish Kumar,
Manish Kumar, Senior Consultant, Bristlecone
was able to deliver two back-to-back demand planning projects in a short time span of four months for two global supply chain heavy companies. The first company was an American candy manufacturer which heavily relied on forecast accuracy due to the short shelf life of inventory and the other was a giant automotive aftermarket part provider which relied on the precise forecast to deliver the right inventory at the right place at the right time. I have conceptualized comprehensive strategies to improve overall forecast accuracy and performed tool-based analytics (R, Python, Excel) to cluster SKUs. I performed forecast accuracy calculation for over 25-30 iterations in a time-bound fashion to maintain the workflow and developed custom tools to analyze time-series patterns outside SAP APO. I assisted the advanced analytics team to enhance forecast accuracy further using advanced time series models as well as ML techniques.
Working on these two projects helped my organization deliver on a very important aspect of demand planning to increase forecast accuracy. It helped me gain a deeper understanding of statistical modeling and trend analysis. The project required analysis of historical sales data to predict future demand, which in turn helped to manipulate and interpret large data sets, identify patterns, and create meaningful visualizations. More than that, it helped me to understand the supply chain dynamics very well such as inventory management, logistics, and supply planning.
Nirupama Radhakrishnan, Senior Manager-Maintenance and Asset Reliability, Pepsico India Holdings Pvt. Ltd.
Being the lead for Inbound Freight Logistics procurement for South Asia, I was responsible for centralization of negotiations and roadmap development for logistics strategy for HUL South Asia region. India Freight market is not structured, and industry is unorganized. Shortage of drivers, lack of infrastructure and return loads remained as prime challenges for the industry. We understood end-to-end process of freight negotiation & planning and plotted ‘As Is’ process, formed task force groups and within a few months, readied the base data for negotiation and optimization. We framed procurement strategy in line with the value-based concept of zero-based budgeting and analyzed cost end-to-end to optimize logistics cost.
We identified opportunities to unlock value in freight cost using many tools like e-tendering and new regionalized suppliers who provided more competitive rates for many key routes. We also unlocked opportunities in part load service which was a big chunk in logistics cost through consolidation and development of hubs close to factory locations to reduce freight cost per ton.
We introduced multi-model logistics model for the first time in Inward logistics in HUL, which was a gamechanger in the transportation journey. HUL handles huge liquid cargo movement to its factories which come in bulk tankers. The rates of tanker movement were much higher than conventional open body truck rates as there is no return load in case of tanker movement in majority of the routes. This low utilization of loads in tankers leads to higher rates and hence the need to optimize rates. Even though we tried to optimize rates through e-tendering and negotiations, there was no further potential possible through conventional processes. Then came the idea of ISO tanks which were slowly being used by industries for liquid cargo export and import movements. The idea was to use the ISO tanks on rail-road mode in place of bulk road tankers. The cost was more competitive due to the clubbing of load for multiple customers and was more carbon friendly option compared to road movement. This idea was piloted for one route with 30% lesser cost compared to road movement cost and was successfully rolled out in other sectors as well. ISO tank model was safer, and more cost effective compared to road tanker.
Apart from freight cost optimization, I was also instrumental in working with the SC Finance team to develop an SAP linked portal where suppliers could put their invoices and know their payment status thereby eliminating the manual process of sending invoices to factories and saving time lost in manual processing. This was considered a big feat in terms of automating freight payments and enabled timely payment to vendors thereby enabling better service.
People across different departments worked together on this project delivering more than 30% savings in the region through collaborative efforts. This is one of the highest value-creation projects under ‘untapped value’, which was part of the gross margin improvement agenda for HUL.
Parthasarathi Muntha, Senior Manager, Global Supply Chain, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.
As the Head of India Inventory & Dispatch Planning, my objective is to ensure maximum availability of all products at all point-of-sale locations at a lower freight. I strategized and led a Dispatch Planning Transformation project that couples inventory planning with load optimization. Our existing FTL:LTL ratio for movements between Warehouses and CFAs was 65:35. I believed this can be improved to a good extent with better planning and using technology. I redesigned the existing dispatch planning logic and onboarded a consultant who provided us with a load optimization platform.
Once we were ready with the new solution, we decided to test it. We did a pilot at our biggest warehouse. Through this new process, we were able to achieve an FTL:LTL ratio of 90:10 compared to the existing 65:35. This gave us savings of almost 10% of the freight spend at the warehouse. More importantly we were successful in maintaining our high service levels by ensuring availability of products at all locations. This solution, if implemented at all warehouses, has the potential to generate savings of about Rs3 crore per annum. The new process also improved the efficiency in warehouse operations where the warehouses were now able to completely execute the dispatch plan in 2-3 days whereas earlier it took them around four days. The team and the management could see the results and were motivated to scale it up. We took the solution to another warehouse and were able to repeat the results. We are currently in the process of scaling the solution to the remaining three warehouses.
It was a challenge to convince the team to use a new method as compared to the existing method that was in use for years. I had to push them to believe in this idea that could add a lot of value to the company. Through a successful pilot, I was able to achieve that. This project was crucial in proving the efficiencies that can be generated by leveraging optimization tools.
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