Bound by the Supply Chain

Today’s class was on supply chain management and logistics. Although the instructor was interesting, the problem again was that the presentation went for the full one-and-a-half hours leaving no time for questions. The presentation also spent an inordinate amount of time on what supply chain management is, what the challenges of supply chain management are, etc. All the time spent on explaining why getting products to the right place and time is important seemed strange. I am guessing that our audience is interested primarily in the Indian context. That is the part these students don’t know much about and want to learn. Even when he got to the part of his presentation on SCM in India, it basically seemed like a superficial sales pitch with inane comments like:
HP is planning to double its headcount in India
Over 50 MNCs including Motorola get their chips designed in India
Even Chinese firms have started R&D centers in India
Of the Fortune 500 companies, 220 outsource to India

There were also slide after slide of lists of quality awards won by Indian companies. But, what I would have liked to know is how India is different from the US in terms of supply chain management and logistics. How do international firms manage the unique infrastructure challenges in India? How do the supply chains and logistics systems in India adapt to the unique environmental conditions in the country? Has this led to some unique innovations that have spread to other countries?

In future, we should consider positioning our interest as “access to experts” rather than lectures from faculty. Ideally, they would provide some brief background on the topic and then answer questions from the group, serving as local experts on the topic of the day.

The afternoon visit was to a company called "Automotive Axles" that was really interesting. We started with a presentation by the CFO of the company, who covered some background on the company and its growth from a sick company to one of the largest suppliers of automotive axles in the country. Their efforts improving the quality of their axles and improving the working conditions of their employees was impressive. We toured the facility and were impressed by the cleanliness and structure of the place, given it is a heavy manufacturing plant. Gene and Harvey seemed to be like kids in toyland. They went off and scrutinized details that the rest of us walked by and engaged any willing employee in conversation.

As an insight into the supply chain challenges of companies that are not fully vertically integrated, the management talked about how the lack of reliability in the supply chain results in them carrying more inventory than is optimal. Humorously, the CFO said they operate with a "Just-In-Case" model rather than "Just-In-Time." He added that a better phrase here may be "Somehow-in-Time."