PNS
XLRI’s Conclave Committee hosted its Operations and Supply Chain Conclave – CLOCKSPEED 3.0.
CLOCKSPEED 3.0 aims to provide a platform for sharing best industry practices and their views on what strategies the organizations can implement to navigate their organization through these turbulent times and make them future-ready through a series of interactive panel discussions and keynote addresses by industry leaders.
The conclave was held hybrid – offline pre-lunch and online post-lunch with Sanjana Varshney, Mohammed Adeeb, and Shivank Chaudaury as student moderators. Students Sarayu Nair, Shilpita Panigrahy, Sohrab Faraz, and Nishit Rastogi was host and co-host for the event.
It started with the inaugural address by Prof. Alok Raj, XLRI Jamshedpur. In his address, he mentioned that collaboration between industry and academia is important. If we are really looking for a partnership, it surely does involve industry and professors, but most importantly, it involves the students, who are the future employees and leaders. It is a dialogue between the parties. Conclaves like this can serve as the beginning of the dialogues. He also mentioned that Indian business is moving towards global practice. The cutting-edge practice of tomorrow is going to come from India, and academia has a key role to play in that.
It was followed by the Chief Guest Speaker Subhash Arya, CEO APAC, TESLA POWER USA. He stressed that Supply chain Management is the backbone of the world’s functioning. We should think globally but take the local environment into consideration while taking business globally. The speed of execution is important in Supply chain management. Everything in Supply chain management is interrelated and has importance. Technology plays a very important role in demand capturing and many other Supply chain activities.
It was followed by a panel discussion on the topic “Supply Chain Analytics: Shaping the future of Logistics and Supply Chain Management” by Milind Kanetkar, Managing Director / Principal, Chainalytics, Abhay Srivastava, President Operations, Mankind Pharma Ltd, Soumov Kundu, Operations Director- East, DHL Supply Chain India Pvt. Ltd., Puskar Mukherjee, Vice President & Head of Supply Chain, Emami Agrotech Ltd., Rajneesh Raman, Founder & COO, Celcius Logistics Solutions Pvt Ltd., and moderated by Sanjana Varshney, PGDM (GM) XLRI Jamshedpur.
Milind Kanetkar, Managing Director / Principal, Chainalytics, attended the event. In his speech, he gave importance to google mobility. The need of the customers can be determined by Analytics and the company should focus on executing and implementing that. Learning and mitigating risks associated with particular data should be facilitated. One should make sure that one should develop processes for the same.
This was followed by Abhay Srivastava, President Operations, Mankind Pharma Ltd. Highlighting the challenges in the Supply Chain environment, Abhay mentioned “risk 35 years back was a one-liner in board meetings. After a few years, its management became a business need of the hour. After covid, risk has come to the dashboard. Risk has become quantifiable; with that, it has become one of the KPIs of the company report. Over the role of ML in the Supply Chain, he reacted by focusing on various analytics along with ML for taking the decision.
Soumov Kundu, Operations Director- East, DHL Supply Chain India Pvt. Ltd.,. Soumov during the panel discussion on the application of Data analytics for supply chain operations mentions “In the application of Data analytics there are two parts: The machine side and the Human side. When we are spending money on ML, we are spending money on the analysis and presentation of the data. But they are still data points. The insights to be derived from the whole exercise is where the human side comes up.”
Puskar Mukherjee, Vice President & Head of Supply Chain, Emami Agrotech Ltd.,. Puskar began the debate by stating that analytics must be integrated into the company's overall strategy, not just the supply chain, and that ownership should flow from the bottom up. Every firm is actively pursuing a move to data-driven analytics. He underlined that all company errors are costly, but supply chain process errors are far more so. Moreover, he emphasized the importance of business cases for conducting ESG and data initiatives. Whether to pursue the analysis of the past or adopt analytics for the future remains a topic of ongoing debate.