Rail Analysis India March 2018 Digital Magazine | Page 174

174 | Article
New Technologies
New Technologies
Country Supply Chains and the missing cost synergies
A
s firms run their supply chains with specific goals, so
does the country. Both can derive value from each
other, in fact both do, but there are a host of synergies
they miss. Much of this missed opportunities stem
from uneven and uncoordinated planning, sharp
changes in policy and lack of partnerships all around.
Think of the major elements of the supply chain costs- infrastructure,
logistics, both inbound and outbound and manufacturing including
raw material sourcing. There are several value chains criss-crossing
one another, very few of them are built on synergies.
Author :
Procyon Mukherjee
Chief Procurement Officer
India, LafargeHolcim
Procyon Mukherjee has worked in
leadership positions in Eastern, Western
and Central parts of India and in Europe
in various capacities in Manufacturing,
including Merger & Acquisition, Strategic
Management, Supply Chain Management
and Project Management. He has
worked in Philips India, Indian Aluminium
Company, Hindalco and Novelis.
Let me start with infrastructure; firm infrastructure is built on
the available public infrastructure, which is never designed for
augmentation. Much of this is incremental which adds to cost. A
public road catering to a district can never support an industrial
development, whereas without the latter the district cannot run a
sustainable livelihood. If industries are mandated to build public
roads in their vicinity, which many actually end up doing, the end
result develops into moral hazard of all kind.
Much of this gets magnified when bulk movement is involved
in the inbound and outbound as the original railway network that
concentrated on an expansion program to move people had to be
transformed to accommodate goods movement. When Ports got
built to help export and imports the connectivity to the hinterland
was not part of the Port infrastructure development. Only recently
this has become part of the logistics plan of the country.
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