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Consumer Goods

Dealing with Variety in Supply Chain

Henry Ford once remarked; “ You can have any color of car, as long as it is black”. The quote highlighted what Ford had to offer, as a choice set, to its customers in the early 20th century. The Model T was produced in only black color.


Consumer Goods

The Cascading Effect!

With the rising consumption power of the population, the Indian automobile market has grown leaps and bounds in the last two decades. The choice set available before an auto customer has grown many folds. For example, three decades back Indian car buyers had just two models to choose from. Today there are at least 100 models of passenger cars available in the market. The same growth story is there in other segments like two wheelers or even the commercial vehicle segment.


Consumer Goods

Managing a Fashion Supply Chain

Implementing pull based supply chain solutions of Theory of Constraints involves significant paradigm shift from the conventional push based supply chain. When most companies, even the big names in many industries, are having push-based systems, the common experiential knowledge of most managers and even consultants are from such systems. As a result there is continual threat of a pull-based system being dismantled as most managers and consultants rely on their past experiences to “improve” systems.


Custom Manufacturing

Who dares to play the Russian Roulette

Russian Roulette is a lethal game of chance in which participants place a single round in a revolver, spin the cylinder, place the muzzle against their head and pull the trigger. The game is usually associated with big prize money and the chances of winning are 5/6. However there are 1/6 chances of getting shot. Not many people come forward to play this game.


Custom Manufacturing

Dealing with Emperor’s new clothes

How does one optimize in an environment of changing product mix coupled with variability in resource loading, while at the same time, maximize plant output along with delivery performance? Looks like a hopeless situation for a plant manager but an exciting problem for a theoretician and hence a great market for an IT product.


Consumer Goods

An SOS for the OEMs

Auto Monitor, July 2011

The reason for the mess in the supply chain is lag in reaction to the change in market demand. The higher the lag in response, bigger is the damage. The lag in response is triggered because of a push mode of operations between the distributors and the OEMs.


Consumer Goods

The ‘Delhi Effect’

AFTERMARKET Sep 11

The stark reality for many distribution companies is the dominant presence of wholesalers who buy in large bulk and sell them to the lowest bidder without any territory allegiance.


Custom Manufacturing

Reliability of delivery: brand positioning opportunity for custom manufacturing organizations

The only performance which can make a perceptual difference to a customer is when a supplier has on-time delivery performance of near 100% as per originally committed date to the consumer...


Engineering and Construction

Stop digging if you are already in a hole!

One of the biggest problems impacting the engineering industry, in India, is retention of experienced engineers in the design department. Organizations are dealing with the situation by forcing the designers to stretch beyond the official working hours which in turn is causing burnout of designers.


Custom Manufacturing

What is new in simplified DBR?

DBR was developed in the mid 80s as a relatively simple, yet effective, production planning methodology. DBR centers on detailed finite capacity scheduling of the capacity resource constraint (CCR). DBR was developed under the assumption of getting orders from the sales, without truly impacting the committed dates, and coming up with the best planning possible under the circumstances.