Covid 19
has made a drastic change in everything around us. From wearing a mask, using
hand sanitizer, to proper social distancing, everything changed and will likely
to continue this trend for the distant future. Another notable change that
happened is the buying behavior of consumers. The lockdown created a new trend
and people started buying everything online and the e-commerce firms adapted to
the change by coming up with various profit making options. During my last blog
I mentioned about the sudden surge in demand for city warehouses. Another update
that retail firms trying to add is the hyperlocal delivery.
The hyperlocal
marketplace is a small market place which caters the needs of a limited
geographical area, local retailers and service providers re benefited from
this. They are now exclusively used by e-commerce firms to deliver the products
at a quicker speed as customers like to get their products within a short
period of time. Also the local offline business also gets a chance to reach out
to their targeted customers through home delivering.
With Covid
19 and the subsequent lockdown made the physical retail to come to a standstill,
there was a sudden surge in demand for the hyperlocal delivery. With many
companies seeing a high demand for product delivery of essential goods through
hyperlocal delivery, there is also demand for delivering other items also through
hyperlocal delivery. With the expected shift in seller and buyer demand to
continue post Covid, hyperlocal delivery is going to see a huge demand in the
coming days. With the demand increasing, the hyperlocal delivery model is going
to get more prominence. The local stores will act as warehouses or hubs for
delivering the products, where the e-commerce will deliver the products to them
and the local shops will in turn deliver it to the door of the customers. With the
growing demand of hyperlocal delivery systems this helps to reduce the long
queues in shops and also those offline customers will start to use the online
way of shopping.
With many firms launching this the growth of
this sector is going to increase. If this trends continues, post Covid also
will also continue with the hyperlocal delivery systems. This will be more easy
as there will be less restrictions or sometimes no restrictions for
transporting products. With the increase in customer convenience by just a
click, everything the surge of hyperlocal delivery probabilities are high
Hello Readers, This is Muhammad Jassim from Amrita School of Business Coimbaotore. Welcome to my Fourth blog on Supply Chain , Hope you find it interesting and insightful. This week blog is all about Is Automation future of Supply Chain.
There comes a frequent question, what role does Automation plays in the Supply Chain in coming near future. I am fascinated to write on this topic about the growing trends in supply chain with respect to automation. It is believed that emerging technologies are the forefront of Supply chains future.
Automation in Supply Chain
The recent intervention of COVID-19 proved that the retail economy is becoming more e-commerce based, meaning orders shipped directly to consumers from large distributors have increased. This as a result made ecommerce sectors to spend more implementing automation technologies. Supply chain technologies are becoming more prominent in business processes and it seems that automation alongside machine learning and artificial intelligence are the future of Industry 4.0.
From the data from various sources it is found that 55% of retail, management and logistics professionals are investing in warehouse automation and 47% in predictive analytics. In the recent report from Gartner it is showed that 30% of operational warehouse workers will be supplemented, not replaced, by collaborative robots in 2023. This shows how essential the implementation of technology is and will be in the future, especially now COVID-19 has proven to be a catalyst in technology adoption. The recent pandemic has thrown many challenges into the procurement and supply chain sector and proved that technology would be essential for successfully implementing social distance and risk mitigation in warehousing and distribution. AI-based automation within warehouses is extensive. The opportunities for implementing such technologies is becoming readily available, from mechanical arms that can sort and handle cargo to intelligent software capable of calculating daily stock rotations.
So this pandemic paved a clear way to implement automation in various process of supply chain as it is the need of an hour so the technology that the firm should adopt is purely based on their decision on which part of their process requires to be automated from the level of must required to adopt to least bothered. Lets see how all the traditional firms react upon this.
I am Sheerapthi Ramiya, 2nd Year MBA from Amrita School of Business, coming back with this week's read ! Hope my readers are doing well and I hope you enjoy :)
It has been 5 months since this blog goes up that the lockdown has been imposed all over India. We have seen how citizens reacted after this news which eventually lead to stockouts. Withing a few days of lockdown, the prices of fruits and vegetables skyrocketed. As we all know Chennai gets its fruits and vegetables from other districts in Tamil Nadu and other states too for its food supply. With lockdown in effect, transportation was made to a stand still which rose demand and price. It clearly shows the Chennai needs to be self-sufficient and self reliant by having a population of 1.09 Crores. If you have read my previous article about the blockade in Qatar, you can see how Qatar took action against this issue. The same is one possible solution to Chennai's food supply.
Where does Chennai gets its Food?
As mentioned before, the food supply in Chennai is majorly from other states in India, districts in Tamil Nadu and a few imported from countries abroad. Given below is a map showing where Chennai receives fruits and vegetables.
All the fruits and vegetables primarily end up at one important location which is apperently Asia's Largest perishable goods market complex - Koyembedu market, the 295 acre marketplace. It is at this point where fruits and vegetables are distributed to retailers across Chennai which finally reaches to the end consumers. This is not the only way retailers obtain these goods; retailers employ contract farming and in some cases have their own farms where they source the produce to be sold. Hence they do not have to rely on Koyembedu Market in this Case. Given below is a picture of Koyembedu Market.
The solution to Post Covid Measures - IDSPs
As mentioned above, transportation has been severely affected due to the Lockdown which bring supplies of goods to a standstill. Food delivery service providers like Swiggy and Zomato began diversifying their business by delivering groceries, fruits and vegetables besides cooked food from restaurants. To confront the the shortage of supply of fruits and vegetables, The State Horticulture Department introduced e-thottam, for home delivery and the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) initiated ward-level supplies of vegetables in carts.
We all saw in the news about Koyembedu market emerging as one of the major clusters contributing to the rise of COVID cases in Chennai and Tamil Nadu. A solution that emerged form a study by Urban Design Collective (UDC) stated the use of Intermediary Delivery Service Providers (IDSP). By applying this service, the number of retailers visiting the market can be reduced. Vehicles can be used to bring the market to your locality or neighborhood. Here one vehicle could support the supply of 10-20 retailers. A visualization of this implementation is shown below.
According to this visual given by UDC, we can see that food reaches the end consumers through one of the following options: door step delivey using app-based platforms, home delivery by shops, direct sales, using app-based platforms. The use of IDSPs reduce the number of trips and thereby crowding at he Koyembedu market, thereby controlling the supply. The IDSPs will deliver supplies to the shops directly from the market line through an app or phone line.
Adding to this research, the street hawkers or fruit and vegetable retailers are using vehicles and carts to deliver groceries into neighborhoods which further improves the supply to the consumers. We are living in an economy where what we need to comes to us instead of us going to what we need.
Can Chennai survive random supply shortages like these?
Even though temporary solution are made and implemented, a permanent solution has to be implemented to safeguard Chennai's supply shortage. To make Chennai self-reliant and self-sufficiant, the Government is promoting "Community Thottams" and "Mottamadi Thottams". A Visualization is shown below.
This implementation opens up possibilities for gated communities, educational institutions and public building to supply their own food resources. Such projects also enables unused lands and empty plots to be set up as community farms. The main catch of this implementation is the reduction of carbon emission for transporting fruits and vegetables. Given below is a video rooftop farming. (Link: https://youtu.be/bzPDCh52CR)
The Windup
Situations like these really help us to ponder upon existing supply chain systems and also makes us find efficient solutions to make supply chain better. Detroit, which was the heart of the automobile industry for USA, is now a Ghost town due to scarcity of fresh food retail. People there suffered food shortages and were forced to move out as they suffered with health issues and illnesses. However there were a group of people who took this problem and found a solution i.e urban agriculture. In the similar way, Food - the basic necessity for a human, should not be at stake due to these events. Self-sufficiency and being self reliant is the way to progress!
What are your thoughts on this ? Do comment below :)
If
you haven't check out my last week's read, which is about self sufficiency and self reliance during a nationwide blockade, click the link below !
