SMARTER CHAINS

ROCKWELL AUTOMATION PRESENTS REINVENTING THE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT AND WAREHOUSING INDUSTRY SAW SOME ENLIGHTENING EXCHANGES

- TEAM MT

CONTINUING OUR REINVENTING...SERIES, WE lately conducted another virtual summit - Rockwell Automation presents Reinventing the Supply Chain Management and Warehousing Industry along with Manufacturing Today. Held on August 19 from 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm, the agenda (see box) was similar to what you saw in July when we organized Reinventing the Automotive Industry.

The two hour span summit had distinguished leaders in their own way from automation, FMCG, and e-commerce industries. Remarkably, most of them have experience across any two sectors and this made the conversation livelier. They know the problems and issues connected with each industry and how they can be alleviated.

We began with the panel discussion that was moderated by Arvind Kakru, Country Head, End User and EPC business, Rockwell Automation India. The topic: Reconfiguring supply chains for a new world.

The panellists comprised Srinivas Garimella, MD, Vega Conveyors & Automation; Satyam Choudhary, Sr Director, Flipkart; Rajeev Mehta, Chief Logistics Officer, Ambuja Cement; SPS Chauhan, Director,Asia & Middle East, Bastian Solutions; and Jayendran Balasubramanian, Founder & CEO, NextFirst Engineering.

Kakru spoke about the disruptions being caused in global supply chain due to the pandemic. He asked the panellists to describe numerous ways they met customer expectations during these times.

Satyam Choudhary said, “We have gone up in complexity in terms of material handling. Changes in demand can swing the supply chain erratically. We have been experimenting with fungibility in the supply chain.”