Operations & IT Articles

Internet has over the years reached billions of people worldwide. Everything now comes under the purview of IoT, and this along with analytics is a massive opportunity for business. We keep hearing about Internet of Things (IoT) but what does it really mean? And people say it’s the next big thing but have we been able to truly the harvest the power of internet of things beyond proof of concept products or services?

In the last few years, big data analytics has taken a priority role in ensuring growth for businesses, understanding customers & exploring new opportunities. With World’s data doubling every two years while the cost of storing it declining at roughly the same rate; every company is now transforming into a data company capable of analysing large complex data and delivering faster and more accurate insights within reasonable cost. Also, machine learning has been a critical aspect of business. But the latest opportunity for companies is to have Big data Analytics through Machine Learning.

Earlier human resources were the sole biggest factor for companies. But with changing times, companies are shifting focus from human productivity to resource productivity. Ethical Manufacturing deals with the Social and environmental issues in production system. It is considered as a subset to Resource productivity. The Resource Productivity directly leads to Lean manufacturing and is correlated to Green Manufacturing, and is considered to be one step ahead of human productivity.

In the present era of high demand uncertainties and shorter product life cycles, all the FMCG companies are consistently trying to strengthen supply chain over demand uncertainties. Challenges gets more complex with numerous sales channels with different order management and supply dynamics. ‘Fill Rate’ is one of the performance indicator which indicates successful supply planning. Fill rate of any particular channel is percentage of placed orders converted in actual sales. Issues in data synchronization between sales and manufacturing departments, poor demand planning, logistics & network constraints, high volatility and uncertainty of the market causes low fill rates in retail sector

Supply Chain management is undergoing a fundamental, rapid transformation forced by host of factors. Globalization has often brought goods and services to our country at a lower price with a very high quality than indigenous one. Multinational companies have perfected the art and science of combining globalization and localization to give ‘Glocalization’ i.e. global products and services customized to meet the needs of locales. Current economic fluctuation has made customer highly cost sensitive. Thus yesterday’s competitors are cooperating today to serve the needs of customer.

Agriculture sector forms an important part of Indian Economy. The share of agriculture in national income of India is about 17.9 percent which is very high compared to the other developed countries such as in USA 3% share and in Canada 4% share is contributed by agriculture sector towards national income. India is the world’s largest producer of pulses and spices and second largest producer of wheat, rice, cotton etc. In such a scenario, it becomes imperative that the agriculture sector in India should be updated continuously through wise use of technology and innovation.