Novire Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Novire), in association with Autoplant and Integrated Truck Business Service Pvt. Ltd. (ITBS)-truck ka load, organized a day-long conference titled ‘IGNITE’ (Intellectual Growth of Novire in Technical Evolution), which discussed the best practices adopted by some of the companies in their supply chain verticals. Speakers represented organisations that have collaborated with Novire for honing their supply chain with newer trends and technology.
Addressing the gathering, Suresh Sachdev, CEO, Novire, said: “In order to effectively benefit from technology applications and its changing trends, it is essential that supply chain professionals set themselves up for transforming their age-old practices to identify effective ways of building customer connect in their respective organisations.”
In the first presentation of the day, Hiten Varia, Chairman, Novire, drew attention towards three trends that are important for all the supply chain professionals. He said: “It is important that we use supply chain to collaborate with customer’s rather than logistics only being an end solution. Customer’s should be involved using Internet of things (IOT) to provide transparent data of the services. These data should further be used as predictive analytics and machine learning techniques for regular PDCA (Plan, Do, Check and Act). An ideal supply chain will be one that uses intelligent interaction between human and things to exchange information and knowledge for creating a new value proposition which is convenient, secure and provides analytics. The amount of data we generate will only help us to plan more sophisticatedly bringing us closer to the customers requirement.”
Automation in logistics
Today, technology has penetrated into virtually all areas of human operation. Manish Choksi, President, Home Improvement International and IT, Asian Paints, said: “Operational excellence can be achieved through digital transformation. Automation is the backbone of new age logistics.”
He cited examples of how his company has automated warehouses even with dense storage of goods. “We have intelligent truck formation and distribution system that ensures full truck load, issue digital signed invoices and omni-channel ordering for dealers.”
His sentiments were aptly echoed by Deepak Gulati, Director Logistics, ACC, when he presented his company’s technology strength in logistics. “For complete asset utilization we rely on RFID, GPS, MLP and analytics. We have successfully installed RFID tags on 400 trucks to get complete movement and visibility information of the trucks. Our drivers do not get down at any point.” The whole project to digitize the supply chain was termed SPEED – Safety, Productivity, Efficient utilization of asset, Ensuring better productivity and Delighted customers. ACC also had ventured into what is termed as ‘E-Passport’, a comprehensive paper-less digital system to capture, maintain and validate details of the drivers, vehicles and their past records.
The speaker from Thailand, Ittaya Sirivasukarn, CEO, Insee Digital, said: “We digitised the entire supply chain process for the cement industry in 9 months to save time and efforts wasted in manual logistics movement.” Other speakers like Sachin Tyagi, VP, Logistics and Zonal Logistics Head, Ultratech and N. Hariharan, Head, Logistics, Sterlite Copper (a unit of Vedanta Ltd.), explained how the measuring services they offer against segment-wise customer demand help them become more visible to the need of their supply chain.
Integrating technologies
What actually propelled a conference of this sort is Novire’s business solutions – basically the confluence of four major business trends like mobile technologies, cloud computing, big data and IOT. Novire’s tracking devices; wireless communication and Android-based mobile application provide business solutions that can be customized for any industry like cement plants, 3PL, cold chain, metals, FMCG and any other asset intensive or customer-centric industry.
The company believes in sensing and then responding to achieve profitable business results. “We use sensors like GPS, RFID, temperature sensors, motion sensors, etc., to identify the business condition and then take appropriate action using the in-built software logic and business rules. The response can be in terms of alerts, SMS, emails, reports, dashboard, analytics, etc.,” explained Sachdev.
Under the brand Autoplant, Mr. Venky Nayar, COO, said: “The company has automated over 40 sites, installed over 1000 RFID readers, tagged over one lakh trucks, weighed over 5,000 trucks daily, and planned and sequenced over 10,000 dispatches every day across different clients and industries.” ITBS-truck ka load, offers return loads to trucks progressively providing multiple options and ensuring highest lorry freight yield to the truck. “We ensure all fleet assets are put on the portal for trip engagement and offer direct connect between the fleet owner and transport company,” commented Capt. Yogesh Kundra, Co-Founder and President, ITBS.