Industry Insights

Getting to the true root of lab quality problems

Popular analytical tools pinpoint human or analyst error as the root cause of quality issues in pharma labs. Is this really so?

Abinav Srivastava, Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla and Navin Lalwani

Life Sciences

Agile CROs can fly high

As manpower costs rise, India's CROs must adapt to stay competitive. To maintain their advantage, CROs have to become partners who offer global standards & complete studies quickly.

Vivek Chopra, Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla, Alka

Life Sciences

Mighty Molecules: Strategies for reclaiming the Global API Throne

Examining India's dependency on China for API in pharma manufacturing and strategies to enhance domestic production.

Authored by Mayuresh Satpute & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Consumer Goods & Retail

Acing New Product Launches

Launching a new product? Don't overlook the importance of a successful launch strategy!

Prasad Bhoite and Sunil Davis Kolangaden

Engineering & Construction

Steps to ensure excellent IRR in Real Estate Projects

By implementing a flow model and ensuring clean handovers between project stages, residential real estate companies can reduce lead times, improve IRR, and create a happier work environment

Vivek Karan, Shantonu Ghosh & Abhishek Singh

Consumer Goods & Retail

Merchandising Grid: The Mechanism for Product Portfolio Management

How to create product portfolios that maximize sales without too much variety burdening the supply chain

Puneet Kulraj, Parag Pai and Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Auto & Auto Components

Shifting gears in auto spare parts business

The lockdown and the economic slowdown in the wake of nCovid-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the auto spare parts industry. Find out how this sector can revive its operations.

Achal Saran Pande, Santosh Mavely, Murali Krishna B, Ravindra Patki, and Puneet Kulraj

Auto & Auto Components

Spare the trouble

Ensuring spares availability is naturally a major challenge due to the enormous variety of parts involved across the portfolio of the OEM’s vehicles.

Satyashri Mohanty & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Auto & Auto Components

The Race from BS IV to BS VI: How to win by solving the woes in Auto R&D

Read to understand how R&D divisions can respond competently to sudden regulatory requirements like a quick conversion to BS VI

Vivek Chopra

Auto & Auto Components

De-stressing NPD

New Product development processes can be de-stressed to meet all stakeholder expectations in terms of cost and delivery deadlines

Vivek Chopra

Auto & Auto Components

Auto e-tailing: Mistakes & opportunities

Finding an eCommerce model that works for them is a top strategic issue for auto company CEOs…

Puneet Kulraj & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Auto & Auto Components

Rally with your allies

Forging long-term relationships with vendors is crucial for supply chain excellence. Find out how?

Satyashri Mohanty & Puneet Kulraj

Auto & Auto Components

More is not merrier

Know more about how to escape from the chronic delays and poor output that NPD of automotive organizations find themselves in

Satyashri Mohanty

Auto & Auto Components

An afterthought on the aftermarket

Find out how auto supply chains can ride industry waves easily and continue to grow

Puneet Kulraj

Auto & Auto Components

Auto supply chain in India – A mishmash of “Push” and “Pull” methods

Read more about creating fully pull-based supply chain systems based on Theory of Constraints in Indian auto companies.

Satyashri Mohanty & Kiran Kothekar

Auto & Auto Components

Fleetguard’s distribution strategy using the Theory of Constraints

To succeed in the aftermarket it was obvious that FFPL would need to have 100% availability of a wide range of their products

Kiran Kothekar

Auto & Auto Components

The liquidity crunch

Maintaining liquidity is providing to be a major problem for the automotive industry but it can be tackled.

Kiran Kothekar

Auto & Auto Components

A viable vision

Most business and supply chain strategies focus on reducing cost at each link in the chain, and thus they create adversarial relationships.

James F. Cox III, Ph.D., PhD, CFPIM, CIRM

Auto & Auto Components

The great Indian productivity myth

Find out how companies can improve their productivity by using the flow techniques of TOC

Satyashri Mohanty & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Auto & Auto Components

The ‘Delhi effect’

Distribution companies have always been wary of wholesalers in their distribution chain.

Puneet Kulraj

Auto & Auto Components

An SOS for the OEMs

The actions of the OEMs have cascading effects in the entire supply chain

Kiran Kothekar

Auto & Auto Components

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

Kiran Kothekar

Auto & Auto Components

The cascading effect!

Managing New Product Development Projects in Auto Component Industry.

Satyashri Mohanty & Abhijit Jha

Auto & Auto Components

The agony of the tier 1 suppliers: Caught between a rock & a hard place

Find out how Tier 1 suppliers can enhance customer service levels to ~ 100% by building a highly responsive "pull" based supply chain

Kiran Kothekar

Auto & Auto Components

Three rules for rapid new product development

Find out how three simple rules of design, WIP and planning can help reduce lead time and increase output

Satyashri Mohanty

Auto & Auto Components

After sales not a lip service

After sales service is extremely important to ensure customer satisfaction however ensuring availability of spare parts without escalating inventory is a huge challenge.

Satyashri Mohanty & Puneet Kulraj

Auto & Auto Components

The new aftermarket highway

Read how TOC offers a win-win solution for auto aftermarket companies and their channel partners

Kiran Kothekar

Auto & Auto Components

Spare parts strategy for OEMs in automobile sector

Find out how OEMs can earn high ROI with higher sales and better availability at lower level of inventory

Satyashri Mohanty & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Life Sciences

Generic drug development: The prescription for success

Find out how companies can crash lead-time in their filing process, increase FDA submissions and earn higher margins

Satyashri Mohanty & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Consumer Goods & Retail

Retail sales operations: Challenges in the current COVID environment

Companies who sell through retailers and depend on salespeople for order collection are facing unprecedented challenges to manage sales in the current COVID environment. Is there a way out?

Kiran Kothekar

Consumer Goods & Retail

Solar eclipse in sales & distribution

A study was conducted to understand the impact of absence of wholesaling on market availability of FMCG during and immediately after the complete lockdown. The results are surprising but conclusive.

Mayuresh Satpute, Malik Rafi, Shankar Arora, Mohit Saini & Puneet Kulraj

Consumer Goods & Retail

The road less travelled

Find out how companies can solve the sales dilemma with ‘pull’ mode of sales

Puneet Kulraj

Consumer Goods & Retail

Overcoming the threat of e-tailers

Find out how brands and retailers can evolve themselves by using TOC while addressing the needs of customers

Kiran Kothekar

Consumer Goods & Retail

Battle for India’s retail market: Who will rescue traditional stores from online retailers?

A replenishment based distribution system can help consumer good companies protect their traditional channel from being decimated by e-commerce.

Satyashri Mohanty & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Consumer Goods & Retail

Pandemic-resistant manufacturing and distribution

Find out how consumer goods companies can build immunity with six levels of supply chain flexibility.

Satyashri Mohanty, Puneet Kulraj and Sachin Jain

Life Sciences

Accelerated pharma manufacturing

Pharmaceutical plants can discover hidden capacity, significantly increase output and respond quickly to market demand. Find out how.

Chandrachur Datta, Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla & Achal Pande

Consumer Goods & Retail

Small is big

Find out a highly cost effective solution to reaching out to even the smallest of retailer point with a single tier distribution network

Sudheer S & Satyashri Mohanty

Consumer Goods & Retail

The unresolved conflict: Modern retail vs. consumer goods companies

Is a win-win solution possible for this ubiquitous tug of war over “margins” between brands and their retailers?

Satyashri Mohanty & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Consumer Goods & Retail

100% availability with less than half the inventory

Find out how stock replenishment time is the key to bringing down inventory in the entire distribution channel

Puneet Kulraj

Consumer Goods & Retail

The devolution marketing

A large portion of what drove us into the Great Recession is rooted in this dysfunctional pattern of distribution.

Andrew R. Thomas & Timothy J. Wilkinson

Consumer Goods & Retail

Build to buffer

One challenge in the fashion industry is that forecasts often are wrong, especially at the individual item and retailer levels. Additionally, only about 15 percent of new designs turn out to be winners, selling out in about six to eight weeks.

Mahesh Gupta, PhD, University of Louisville
James Cox III: Ph.D, University of Georgia

Consumer Goods & Retail

Who creates slow movers?

Read about how can companies convert slow-movers into a fast-mover

Puneet Kulraj

Consumer Goods & Retail

Power of availability

Find out how you can grow sales at double the market growth rate without any additional investment!

Kiran Kothekar

Consumer Goods & Retail

From inventory turns to norm turns

In Distribution centric organizations, the level of Inventory is perceived to be a critical measure to understand the health of the system (inventory with respect to sale).

Kiran Kothekar

Consumer Goods & Retail

Managing distribution chain: Is there a better way than gazing the crystal ball?

Find out how companies can get the right material to the right place and ensure availability

Puneet Kulraj

Consumer Goods & Retail

Old is gold no more

Perishable goods industry is finding it increasingly difficult to live with the problem of low freshness of stocks at the point of sale. Find out how TOC can help?

Arvind Singh Rana

Consumer Goods & Retail

TOC replenishment in a wholesale- dominated market, an oxymoron?

A lot of my friends in the distribution industry (and I have lots of them!) are quite intrigued by the fact I make a living out of implementing things as simple as “The Goal ” and “Its Not Luck ”.

Puneet Kulraj

Consumer Goods & Retail

Profitability percentage (%)

A good measure for evaluation of operational productivity should avoid the two errors—false positives and false negatives. Let us check if the measure of profitability calculated as PBDIT as percent of sales meets the criteria. A growing company, improving profitability IPBDIT as percent of sales (PBDIT%)] over the years is often seen as an improvement in performance.

Satyashri Mohanty

Consumer Goods & Retail

What enables effective decisions?

With cloud computing and ever reducing prices of storage systems, the available capacity to store data has gone up exponentially.

Satyashri Mohanty

Consumer Goods & Retail

Counter counterfeiting

Find out how companies can fight fakes by leveraging their direct distribution

Puneet Kulraj & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Consumer Goods & Retail

Preventing the demise of a store

Find out why retail stores die and how it can be prevented by implementing a TOC based supply chain

Kiran Kothekar

Consumer Goods & Retail

Enhancing profitability of retail chains: Using the fundamental principles!

Despite significant mark-ups, most retail chains struggle to make profits. Find out how TOC can help?

Kiran Kothekar

Consumer Goods & Retail

Size does matter!

Find out how to prevent sale loss due to stock out of ‘sizes’ without inflating inventory

Puneet Kulraj

Consumer Goods & Retail

Leveraging franchisees for profitable growth in retail

Find out how retail companies via franchisee model can profitably grow without increasing operating expenses

Santosh Mavely

Consumer Goods & Retail

A folly called trade promotions

Read about how the results of a field research into retailer behaviour indicates contrary to the entrenched belief in the consumer good industry

Puneet Kulraj & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Consumer Goods & Retail

Retailer’s dilemma

It is not uncommon for a manufacturing company to enjoy a profitability of around eight percent when the gross contribution is about thirty percent.

Puneet Kulraj

Life Sciences

Rethinking Indian pharma distribution: Countering e-pharmacies

Will the direct-to-customer model of e-pharmacies overtake the traditional multi-echelon distribution model of pharmaceutical companies?

Satyashri Mohanty, Ravindra Patki and R Kannan*

Consumer Goods & Retail

Straightening the hockey stick in sales and distribution

Read about how to break the omnipresent month end skew and release capacity

Puneet Kulraj

Textile & Garments

Manufacturing strategy for fashion garments

Textile manufacturing practices in India are primarily geared towards leveraging economies of scale and an increasingly non-existent " low cost advantage". This makes it an enormous challenge for large Indian garment manufacturing firms to take up higher margin but lower volume fashion garment orders. Find out how this industry can change gears.

Chandrachur Datta & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Textile & Garments

Disentangling sales: Increasing sales productivity in textile companies

Find out how to increase bandwidth and bring transparency and agility in textile & garment companies.

Chandrachur Datta & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Textile & Garments

A stitch in time: Cutting lead time and improving reliability of textile supply chains

Read about how garment and textile manufacturing plants can not just reduce costs but also reduce lead time of supply

Chandrachur Datta & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Textile & Garments

Weaving magic in textile sampling with Theory of Constraints

Find out how an effective sampling process can help textile and garment companies to stay at par with the continuously evolving global trends

Chandrachur Datta

Textile & Garments

Reclaiming global leadership in textile manufacturing: Challenges & solutions

Find out why to be globally competitive, Indian textile exporters have no option but to make a huge paradigm change

Satyashri Mohanty & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Textile & Garments

Dealing with variety in supply chain

Companies can continuously add product variety without creating chaos in their supply chain. Find out how

Kiran Kothekar

Textile & Garments

Think small, reap big

Textile companies can solve their problems with huge inventory and significant markdowns

Satyashri Mohanty

Textile & Garments

Everyone can win!

Read to understand how textile companies can get an edge over competition keeping with the current trends in markets

Chandrachur Datta

Textile & Garments

Managing a Fashion Supply Chain

Implementing pull based supply chain solutions of TOC from the conventional push based supply chain

Satyashri Mohanty

Engineering & Construction

Managing Large CAPEX Projects: Moving away from ‘Project Management’ to ‘Project Flow Management’

Managing capex project using milestone commitments of stakeholders is the root of delays and budget overruns.

Abhishek Singh, Satyashri Mohanty and Anantha Keerthi

Engineering & Construction

Bridging the pandemic chasm

Read this article to know how infrastructure companies can manage a quick post-lockdown transition and revival, in spite of the current working capital woes

Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla, Damodar Enduri, Shantonu Ghosh

Engineering & Construction

Uncovering the hidden profit

Focusing on timely completion of projects is necessary, but it’s not sufficient to protect all of a large infrastructure project’s margins. Find out how companies can prevent margin erosion due to lack of timely material reconciliation!

Vivek Upadhyay & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Engineering & Construction

Right for accounting. Wrong for project management.

Financial accounting is a challenge in project organizations involved in delivering large construction projects for its clients.

Satyashri Mohanty

Engineering & Construction

EPC reborn focus on flow

Find out how to deliver EPC projects on time even in an environment of high uncertainty

Satyashri Mohanty

Engineering & Construction

What is more important in projects – time, cost or quality?

Project management literature talks about the need to measure and control all three variables of the project – Time, Quality, and Costs (or budget).

Satyashri Mohanty

Engineering & Construction

Getting CCPM implementation right

Cherry-picking solution components and sequencing them incorrectly can lead to the failure of CCPM implementations

Satyashri Mohanty

Engineering & Construction

Unshackling infrastructure industry

Find out how companies can not only manage but also flourish in spite of the inherent challenges of project environments

Satyashri Mohanty & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Engineering & Construction

The curse of multi-project environments

Find out how TOC can help companies avoid havoc of delays in projects

Satyashri Mohanty

Engineering & Construction

Deadline culture – does it help?

Do task deadlines really help control wastage of time? Find out.

Satyashri Mohanty

Engineering & Construction

Improving flow in large infrastructure projects

Most of the large infrastructure projects are actually many independent sub-projects, almost executed in parallel with integration at the end.

Satyashri Mohanty

Engineering & Construction

Caught in a time wrap!

Large construction and erection projects seem to have a dubious record – most of them are delayed with significant cost overruns.

Satyashri Mohanty

Engineering & Construction

Critical chain project management: doing more projects – faster!

Read about how projects can be managed differently and more effectively using the Theory of Constraints approach

Satyashri Mohanty

Engineering & Construction

Enabling resource productivity in project environments

Find out how most projects are managed under several erroneous paradigms which lead to chronic delays

Kedar Amdekar & Satyashri Mohanty

Engineering & Construction

Stop digging if you are already in a hole!

Find out how design departments can continuously increase output even when capacity is limited by adopting TOC

Satyashri Mohanty & Prabhat Choudhury

Equipment Manufacturing

The Equipment Enigma: Aligning NPD processes to deliver business growth

Find out how the Indian equipment manufacturing companies can align their R&D processes to grow consistently

Suhas Kini

Equipment Manufacturing

Exploiting sales capacity

Find out how the salesmen can focus on selling and not waste time on sales support tasks!

Satyashri Mohanty & Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla

Equipment Manufacturing

Revving up the agri-equipment business

Read to see how the agri-equipment businesses can quickly ramp up operations to take advantage of the rising demand in the segment

Ravindra Patki, Dr. Shelja Jose Kuruvilla & Achal Saran Pande

Equipment Manufacturing

Spares distribution- When the long tail wags the dog

Find out how to ensure availability of equipment spares without increasing inventory

Vivek Chopra

Equipment Manufacturing

Standing on the shoulder of the giants

It is easy to trace the popularity of Lean production to Toyota’s success. Toyota’s success is undeniable.

Eliyahu M. Goldratt, 2008

Equipment Manufacturing

Get more out of less

Read about how production skews can be broken to expose the hidden capacity in manufacturing plants

Satyashri Mohanty

Equipment Manufacturing

Planning improvement projects

Knowing WHAT TO improve is as important as knowing WHEN TO improve and WHAT NOT to improve!

Satyashri Mohanty

Equipment Manufacturing

What is new in simplified DBR?

DBR was developed in the mid 80s as a relatively simple, yet effective, production planning methodology.

Eli Schragenheim

Equipment Manufacturing

Dealing with emperor’s new clothes

Find out how TOC can help plant managers maximize speed of order flow while improving capacity utilization

Satyashri Mohanty

Equipment Manufacturing

How bad are local efficiency measures?

Find out how manufacturing plants using TOC can maximize output by abolishing the concept of local efficiencies

Satyashri Mohanty & Shailesh Ranjan

Equipment Manufacturing

Reliability of delivery: Brand positioning opportunity for custom manufacturing organizations

Find out how supply chains build on the principles of Theory of constraints can provide the competitive edge to stay ahead in the market

Puneet Kulraj

Articles

Getting to the true root of lab quality problems

Agile CROs can fly high

Mighty Molecules: Strategies for reclaiming the Global API Throne

Acing New Product Launches

Steps to ensure excellent IRR in Real Estate Projects

Merchandising Grid: The Mechanism for Product Portfolio Management

Shifting gears in auto spare parts business

Spare the trouble

The Race from BS IV to BS VI: How to win by solving the woes in Auto R&D

De-stressing NPD

Auto e-tailing: Mistakes & opportunities

Rally with your allies

More is not merrier

An afterthought on the aftermarket

Auto supply chain in India – A mishmash of “Push” and “Pull” methods

Fleetguard’s distribution strategy using the Theory of Constraints

The liquidity crunch

A viable vision

The great Indian productivity myth

The ‘Delhi effect’

An SOS for the OEMs

Who dares to play the Russian roulette

The cascading effect!

The agony of the tier 1 suppliers: Caught between a rock & a hard place

Three rules for rapid new product development

After sales not a lip service

The new aftermarket highway

Spare parts strategy for OEMs in automobile sector

Generic drug development: The prescription for success

Retail sales operations: Challenges in the current COVID environment

Solar eclipse in sales & distribution

The road less travelled

Overcoming the threat of e-tailers

Battle for India’s retail market: Who will rescue traditional stores from online retailers?

Pandemic-resistant manufacturing and distribution

Accelerated pharma manufacturing

Small is big

The unresolved conflict: Modern retail vs. consumer goods companies

100% availability with less than half the inventory

The devolution marketing

Build to buffer

Who creates slow movers?

Power of availability

From inventory turns to norm turns

Managing distribution chain: Is there a better way than gazing the crystal ball?

Old is gold no more

TOC replenishment in a wholesale- dominated market, an oxymoron?

Profitability percentage (%)

What enables effective decisions?

Counter counterfeiting

Preventing the demise of a store

Enhancing profitability of retail chains: Using the fundamental principles!

Size does matter!

Leveraging franchisees for profitable growth in retail

A folly called trade promotions

Retailer’s dilemma

Rethinking Indian pharma distribution: Countering e-pharmacies

Straightening the hockey stick in sales and distribution

Manufacturing strategy for fashion garments

Disentangling sales: Increasing sales productivity in textile companies

A stitch in time: Cutting lead time and improving reliability of textile supply chains

Weaving magic in textile sampling with Theory of Constraints

Reclaiming global leadership in textile manufacturing: Challenges & solutions

Dealing with variety in supply chain

Think small, reap big

Everyone can win!

Managing a Fashion Supply Chain

Managing Large CAPEX Projects: Moving away from ‘Project Management’ to ‘Project Flow Management’

Bridging the pandemic chasm

Uncovering the hidden profit

Right for accounting. Wrong for project management.

EPC reborn focus on flow

What is more important in projects – time, cost or quality?

Getting CCPM implementation right

Unshackling infrastructure industry

The curse of multi-project environments

Deadline culture – does it help?

Improving flow in large infrastructure projects