Ways of Building Operational Responsiveness for Agile Business Units

        Yatish Prasad Dasari, Jindal Global Business School, Sonipat, Haryana.

(E-mail: 11jgbs-ypdasari@jgu.edu.in,Mobile: +91 8053458985)

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   In a business context, agility typically refers to the ability of an organization to incorporate the ideas of flexibility, balance, adaptability and coordination under one umbrella. in productive and cost-effective ways. Equipping business units with greater stimulus to respond to the unexpected changing scenarios is a way of striking the right balance between being Efficient vs. Agile business units. Let’s attempt to understand this point from project execution point of view.

It is the process and structure that holds the key for any project execution. The processes being established are by engineers and project managers are much more than a sequence of steps they encapsulate. Business process is the superset of workflow. And workflow is the task and activities arranged in an order to be followed on the regular day to day basis. Business processes, once defined, are modeled, automated, managed and optimized to be effective, cost efficient and achieve high operational performance, whereas the work flow ensure that the modeled is executed effectively on day to day basis. It is these processes, which cover various technical as well as project management tasks, thus benefiting in smooth execution of projects, including a newcomer in the organization. These processes help managers and engineers emulate past successes and avoid the pitfalls. Hence right process design is the main means of using past knowledge.

Creating Checklists, Guidelines and Templates for the activity encompasses overall process for the system. Effective process management is a direct offshoot of organisation previous experience of executing similar projects. In other words managers could employ process tailoring which means modifying or altering a previously set standard process to suit the existing needs of the project. Designing the structure for project execution much depends upon the job titles, job description and creating right relationship between the titles.

The following are some typical examples of project-specific process tailoring:

• Adding/removing work products and tasks.
• Changing milestones, and performing based on the state of completion of project.
• Tool / technique / formal work format used for each work product can be changed.
• Responsibilities for review, levels of reviews and approval can bring change in process.
• Detailed procedures for measuring completion of task, performance measurement, different forms of reports, applying changes required, on the go change request, etc. can make difference in a specific projects.

 

    

                                   

                                                 Figure: Process Design for the Project                                                         (Source: Knowledge Infrastructure for Project Management, Pankaj Jalote, iiitd.edu.in)

 

 

         In one of the surveys carried out by Progress Software which surveyed in 400 large organisations in the US and Europe had startling findings:

• Only 8% of 400 large organizations surveyed by team report business information in real time, only 19% report on an intra-day basis.
• 74% of companies surveyed said they are overwhelmed by the amount of information flowing through the business.
• 72% of those surveyed admitted that their business processes take too long to meet customer demand.

 

The above problems needs ability of management to understand and respond to the problems rather than waiting before it’s too long such that project slips delivery schedules which affects the brand image of the organisation.Solution to the above problems could be as follow:

• One of the ways to curtail such unresponsive practice is building an effective MIS structure which would help feeding in necessary information into the process usable for the appropriate job title holders.
• Analytical dashboards can be used by business analysts for gaining insights from a volume of data collected over time. It helps in identifying opportunities and areas of improvement for meeting project goals in an effective manner. Analytical dashboards make use of what if analysis, pivots to identify patterns and opportunities.
• Operational dashboards can also be used to track key performance indicators (KPIs), in short to understand whether the project is on or off time and by how much. It is also useful to identify potential operational issues as they occur.

Hence it can be said having the right processes, effective MIS and leveraging the use of dashboard at optimal levels will help in building Operational Responsive for Agile Business Units.

References

1. www.klipfolio.com/resources/operational-analytical-bi-dashboards
2. www.iiitd.edu.in/~jalote/papers/KnowledgeMgmt.pdf
3 www.telerik.com/agile-project-management-tools/tfs.aspx

 

FMEA in Manufacturing Industries

Ankit Dave, Jindal Global Business School, Sonipat, Haryana.

(E-mail: 11jgbs-adave@jgu.edu.in, Mobile: +91 8295099096)

           21^st Century is a new age for development; and also puts a serious note on technology & innovation management. Industries are more focused on reliable product which provide strength to the market and similarly deliver durability to the end customer. Today product life cycle are reducing day-on-day as new technologies  are being devleoped to fill the customer needs. Successful and leading manufacturing industries are more Quality concerned. Today‘s manufacturing industries have more production potential and has greater importance with respect to management reliability and quality. Product risk or product failure in term of quality and reliability enables manufacturing industries to put corrective action on their product and its related features.  Failure mode & Effect analysis (FMEA) is an effective technique for preventing the potential problem and action needed in eradicating the cause of error in manufacturing industries.

FMEA can be used for following listed benefits

• It is an analysis of the potential error/ defect in the Product / System in the selected time period for different selective measures.
• It can also be used for the new product development which enables the company to utilize its resources for the reduction in risk and led for better risk management practices.
• It is also helpful tool for design procedure of the product development to any manufacturing industries.
• It also provide many possible solutions to the manufacturing industries in term of Cost Saving, Better Quality, Higher Reliability, Increase safety aspects of product & Enhance Customer Satisfaction. 
• Cost Saving benefits are associated with FMEA, which are less expensive to control for Design improvement / Product development for any manufacturing industries.

Organizational FMEA Process included the examination of basic Hardware, Software, Personnel and functional aspect of any manufacturing industries which identifying all ways of failure for any system and provide the failure effect and its impact on the concern product. Essential to FMEA process is the detail analysis of the corrective action that will led to prevention for the product in terms of failure effect and restore the risk for its adverse effect. According to the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) International Aerospace Recommended Practice (ARP) 5580, Recommended Failure Modes and Effects (FMEA) Practices for Non-Automobile Applications. 

 

Figure: An Effective FMEA Process for Manufacturing Industries

(Source: http://www.reliasoft.com/newsletter/v6i1/fmea_process.htm)

FMEA is a structured framework for the industries that promotes ideas about the kinds of failures that may occur, careful analysis of specific risk/hazard areas, proper documentation of sources and assumptions, and identification of interventions that manage risks to an acceptable level.

Workshop on PRIMAVERA P6 EPPM

J.Joshuva Alexander, Jindal Global Business School, Sonipat, Haryana.

(E-mail: jos237@gmail.com, Mobile: +91 8053464429)

About CADD Centre:

CADD Centre is the Asia’s largest CAD Company partnership with Primavera Systems Inc., the world's leading project and portfolio management software Company in August 2007. This CADD Centre is fully geared up to provide advanced courses on Primavera with certified instructors. They also having franchise-based training centers for Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM), offers over 100 courses for students and working professionals of Mechanical, Civil, Electrical & Electronics engineering, Architecture, and Project Management disciplines. They focus on industry-institute partnership initiatives, their courses are constantly updated with industry inputs on CAD, CAE, Graphics and Project Management. The services of CADD include CAD Training, CAD Software sales, full scale monochrome and color scanners, A0 LED printers, document management and software development.

They have successfully trained about 7,00,000 professionals from diverse engineering, graphic and management backgrounds. They are also preferred training partner of more than 4500 corporate houses in India and abroad.

 About the workshop

Group photo with Senior Instructor, CADD Center, Dwarka



It was a one day workshop, started with the brief introduction about the industry standard concepts of project management and tools and techniques being used by the organizations. The instructor explained the pros and cons of using Microsoft Excel and the extent it could be employed in the project management. Having said so he took our attention towards the Microsoft Project software explained its features, he also highlighted that Microsoft project is more user friendly and compared with that of Microsoft excel. He further went on to give detail illustration on Primavera, its present version and it’s superiority over its previous versions

At the end of the day each one of us was provided with primavera P6 software installed computers were given a sample assignment to get hands on training mode.

 Learning’s from the workshop:

•  Primavera P6 EPPM (Enterprise Project Portfolio Management) is now the product of Oracle.
• It provides 100% web based solution for managing projects of any size, and adapts to various levels of complexity across projects.
• It provides executives with a real time view of their organization.
• Primavera P6 EPPM easily scale from a single user on a small project to 10,000 of users engaged in Millions of activities.
• It can be used through desktop computers, laptops, or through cloud computing. It also has application for iphone and ipad.
• The software is used for planning executing and monitoring of projects.
• This software has the ability to allocate human resource with the project online. And we can monitor every individual work allocated or completed. Normalizing of work distribution can be seen very well through different graphs. Therefore it enhances the maximum utility of the individual without over loading of work.  
• Time sheets in Primavera is used as tracking tool to gain insights into costs and resource use.
• We can generate a report and analytics with proper charts which would drive us to make sound decisions and gives updates of value mapping of the project cost.
• Along with the project schedule, we can allocate the required human resources with their working hours and cost per hour. This helps resource manage to identify and allocate the required number of people at right time at right cost.
• In primavera the calendar is based on days and not by dates. This would help to us to generate a holiday list according to the company norms. The festive holidays has to be done manually for all the years estimated in a project. As dates are not fixed for every month or year, but the days are fixed (Monday-Sunday).
• We can create a security profiles. Now the security can be set at every level of work. Who can see the project, who can edit the project, which can only input and generate data. There are few areas where only top management can take decision. So multi-level Security can be setup for the data protection and validation.
• As primavera is effective but costly software so only 8% to 10% of companies are using Primavera in India and nearly 12% of companies are using MS Project.

In a nutshell it was a small step towards excelling in the field of project management and its supportive tool PRIMAVERA P6 EPPM.

Acknowledgement:

I would like to acknowledge the immense effort of Prof. Saroj Koul, Octaphi club advisor/Mentor for given this opportunity to us to learn about Primavera and I am thankful to Octaphi Operations Management Club members and other enthusiasts from JGBS for participating this workshop.

Supply Chains in the Age of E-Business

Amir Subhani, Jindal Global Business School, Sonipat, Haryana.

(E-mail: 12jgbs-asubhani@jgu.edu.in, Mobile: +91 9050423280)

For shorter product life cycle, firms need to manage their supply chain efficiently. The present day information technology system has become powerful tool for efficient supply chain process especially retailers and manufacturers. Industries have started to renovate by applying new management theme to fulfill the requirement for face to face interaction, resulting in the shorter lead time and reduced warehousing.

Internet not only provides consumers more power to compare prices but also allows companies to find more distributors easily without paying commission to brokers. It also helps in effective tracking of goods. Supply chain in e-Business focus to minimize transaction process which ultimately benefits customers. For example in case of Levi Strauss, executives were unable to track its moving products. They were unknown to the quantity of jeans manufactured in different factories as well as the amount in trucks or in distribution centers. These inefficiencies caused major control issues over its distribution channels due to which only 65% Levi Strauss’s products were able to reach the customers on time. For Levi Strauss, they are required to meet the needs of Wal-Mart and other major retailers. One of the major requirements of Wal-Mart and other major retailers is that their supplies be reliable so that the shelves are always stocked. This means that Levi Strauss’s success largely depends on their supply chain which it improved and leveraged information technology in its supply chain. The figure 1 shows the outlook of E-Business module for enhanced Supply Chain Management.

Figure 1: E-Business module for Supply Chain Management

(Source: M. Eric Johnson, Seungjin Whang, Fibre2fashion.com)

Internet has brought the revolution in conducting business. Dell showcases its product through the medium of internet. Solectron and Ford increased product design collaboration using this service. UPS and Federal Express have provided the facility of tracking their packages just through internet. E-Business allows firms to enhance revenues by direct sales to customers by bypassing retailers. It can enhance revenues by speeding up collection of funds.

 

Figure 2: E-Business Environment and Strategies

(Source: http://www.prudens.com/images/ebusenvirstrat2.gif )

 

The following are some of the software applications are being used in E-business for better supply chain management:

 

Software	Manufacturer
ASSIST4	AEB, GERMANY
Electronic Data Interchange(EDI)	ACOM Solutions, ACT data services
Microsoft Dynamic NAV	Microsoft
Logistic Functions in SAP	SAP

E-Business module creates the e-Business environment and strategies as shown in figure 2, which enhances the supply chain management and deriving the maximum benefits by shortening the business process with the advances of information technology companies also, can restructure the logistics flows of their products to gain efficiencies.

References:

1. M. Eric Johnson, Seungjin Whang, e-Business and supply chain management: An overview and framework, [Retrieved from fibre2fashion.com].
2. http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/VanMieghem/htm/e-business-SCMR-April26.pdf
3. http://www.avyg86.dsl.pipex.com
4. http://voices.yahoo.com
5. http://www.saycocorporativo.com
6. http://www.pearsoned.ca
7. http://www.scribd.com/doc/55494080/Enterprise-Systems

Challenges and Implications of Storage Capacity (warehousing) in India

J.Joshuva Alexander, Jindal Global Business School, Sonipat, Haryana.

(E-mail: jos237@gmail.com, Mobile: +91 8053464429)

Warehousing, the most important auxiliary service for development of logistics industries in India also plays a critical role in developing economy of a country.The growth potential of warehousing sector is huge and it is expected to grow at a rate of 30% to 40% per year. [Sanjay, 2011]. Warehousing plays a crucial role in supply chain in sorting and handling the commodities and helps to bridge the demand gap from supply of goods to on time for the products to reach the customer. It helps to sustain in scarcity or in high demand period. The warehousing capacity available in India, in public, cooperative and private sector is about 108.75 million MTs (Planning commission of India, Twelfth five year plan). Storage facilities in India are provided by Central warehousing corporation, State warehousing corporation, Cooperatives and private.  [Dr. D.P. Patra, Jt. General Manager (Mktg) IFFCO]. The planning commission of India given the storage capacity of different warehouses sectors in India in the twelfth five year plan is as follows:

 

S.No.	Name of the Organization /Sector	Storage Capacity in Million MTs
1.	Food Corporation of India (FCI)	32.05
2.	Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC)	10.07
3.	State Warehousing Corporations (SWCs)	21.29
4.	State Civil Supplies	11.30
5.	Cooperative Sector	15.07
6.	Private Sector	18.97
Total		108.75

Table 1: Storage capacity in India (Source: planningcommission.nic.in)

 

 Warehousing has been typically dominated by small players with common issues like small capacities and poor deployment of handling, stacking and monitoring technologies. Government run warehouses are in even poorer conditions with overstocking, lack of maintenance and obsolete technologies when observed in the present scenario. Other fact that has affected both the location as well cost of operating a warehouse has been the “octroi tax”. Other factors that challenges the growth of warehousing in India are:

1. Lack of Government regulations and policies regarding licensing, performance, and accountability
2. Unorganized participants, including small-time trucking companies, have been taking advantage of this situation by cannibalizing business from professional warehousing providers.
3. High turnaround time due to lack of infrastructure, inadequate docking facility etc.
4. Poor service provided by 3PL providers leads the customers to dissatisfaction
5. Lack of cold storage space
6. Inadequate transport facilities like less rail freight, high container costs, less number of reefer vans
7. Low penetration of IT practices in the warehousing industries
8. Lack of training to build skilled manpower

For the better development and growth of warehousing companies in India,  the services provides has to look in the three key essentials for warehouses: 1) the warehouse should be logistical, i.e. right location of the warehouse.  2) well defined norms is needed for the growth of warehousing industries and to enhance the supply chain, in the form of Warehousing Regulation & Development Act (WRDA) 2001 and Goods and Services Tax (GST) [Frost & Sullivan Research Service, 2009]. These regulations will eliminate the non-registered and warehousing companies and standardize the warehousing rates across the country and finally all the operations data should be to synchronize with the IT systems.  Moreover these three key essentials would enhance the efficient distribution and supply chain in logistics sector which would create a demand for the more storage and warehousing services in India.
 

 Reference:

1.      Dr. D.P. Patra, Jt. General Manager (Mktg) IFFCO, Logistics Planning For The Fertiliser Sector

2.      http://planningcommission.nic.in/aboutus/committee/wrkgrp12/pp/wg_ware.pdf

3.      Strategic Analysis of Growth Opportunities in Indian Warehousing Market, Frost & Sullivan Research Service, 14 Dec 2009. Retrieved from http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/report-brochure.pag?id=P354-01-00-00-00

4.      Sanjay Khanna, (September, 2011), CARGOTALK. Retrieved from http://www.cargotalk.in/pdfs/sept11.pdf 

5.  Building Warehousing Competitiveness, “Adopt the Best”, conference proceedings, 29-30 July 2009, New Delhi. Retrieved from http://www.ciilogistics.com/building_warehousing_adopt_the_best.pdf

Perspectives on Supply chain sustainability

V.Vinay Raju, Jindal Global Business School, Sonipat, Haryana.

(E-mail: 12jgbs-vvraju@jgu.edu.in, Mobile: +91 9050423191)

 

The word was revolving around my mind for hours what it is exactly, why is it and how does it function?

A supply chain is a grid of facilities and distribution options of a firm that performs the tasks of raw materials procurement, material transformations into finished products, and the distribution of these finished products to customers [Ram, 1995]. Supply chains exist in both service and manufacturing organizations, although the complexity of the chain may vary greatly from industry to industry and firm to firm and it connects an organization input to its output with additional challenges of lowering cost, improving efficiency, ensuring definite time frame etc. The word sustainability refers to the capacity or power to endure things through regular maintenance, Nourishment, contrasting and development and it holds the same meaning when assigned with the supply chain.

Eco awareness, cooperative business relationships and applied sustainability concepts have immediate business impacts and reduce business sustainability risks by creating SCM alignment. Incorporating sustainability concepts into business relationships creates at a minimum line of sight across the value chain. This visibility provides a path to the greater value of alignment and engagement [Julie, 2012].

 Supply chain sustainability is important in current and also for future trends of business and can be an interest of maximum number of production houses and industry. A recent survey conducted by Centre for Industrial Research and Service (CIRAS) reported that 30% of manufacturers are gaining new profits directly from sustainability initiative, this shows the clear opportunity for bottom line results of implementing sustainability. The major issues in supply chain sustainability are in advance attention in both academic and literature.

The basic roadmap for supply chain sustainability formulates as follows:

Evaluating current supply chain – This forms the first and the major action to be performed in an assessment of current supply chain in terms of financial, social and environmental status and needs.

Developing a vision - a long term vision should be attained for supply chain sustainability. The manufacturing/production houses should know and understand the current situation of sustainability initiatives and issues in the entire supply chain.

Creating a road-map – while creating this the company should focus on making the basic compliance guidelines for their own facilities.

Execute review and change – organization or a company should understand the better impacts of decision on sustainability. They should review and update them-self regularly. Since the decision taken today is right but may be different   tomorrow or the coming days.

Practice is an area and art of boundary of it. One of the key aspects of it is the holistic view that is applied in understanding the total impacts of products or service and focusing improvements in areas with the most impact. This approach encompasses both the entire life cycle of a product or service and the entire supply chain of that service.

Supply chain sustainability majorly consists of three factors, which is also called as triple bottom-line for the supply chain sustainability.

1.      Environmental Performance: Implementing Green Supply chain and developing efficient economic methods by using control mechanisms will help in enhancing industrial ecology performance through the supply chain.

Figure 1: Industrial ecology

(Source: http://valuestream2009.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/industrial-ecology-revisited-its-place-in-the-green-economy-supply-chain-management/)

 

2.      Social performance: Domestic suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, local retailers, consumers working in feed forward and feed backward loop will enhance the social performance of supply chain sustainability.

 

Figure 2: Social co-existence aiding supply chain sustainability  

(Source: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652608001455)

3.      Financial performance: Success of Financial performance in supply chains primarily can be linked to currency fluctuations, raw material sourcing. Hedging the risks associated with them will help to ensure better financial performance.

Summary

The sustainability of business and its impact on the supply chain has to be well documented by creating alignment across the value chain. The implementation of above said three sustainability factors helps to achieve operational efficiency, reduce cost, and add value.

 Reference:

1. Julie Urlaub, Thursday, December 23, 2010, CSR 2010: Emerging Career Choices in Supply Chain & Sustainability. Retrieved from http://blog.taigacompany.com/blog/sustainability-business-life-environment/csr-2010-emerging-career-choices-in-supply-chain-sustainability
2. Kristine A. Wong, October 25, 2012, Wal-Mart commits to scale sustainability of global supply chain. Retrieved from http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2012/10/25/walmart-commits-scale-sustainability-global-supply-chain
3. Mr. Craig R. Carter – International Journal of physical distribution and logistics distribution – a framework on of sustainable supply chain management.
4. Mr. Gabrielle M. Blue – Inc.com – how to build your sustainability into your supply chain.
5. Ram Ganeshan, Terry P. Harrison, 1995, An Introduction to Supply Chain Management. Retrieved from http://lcm.csa.iisc.ernet.in/scm/supply_chain_intro.html
6. United Nations Global Compact – issue –supply chain sustainability resource and practice.