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K.V. Kurmanath

Hyderabad, Oct. 6 With a view to improve efficiency and for quicker movement of goods, the centre for Global Logistics and Manufacturing Strategies (GLAMS) at Indian School of Business, has developed a model that envisages a network of 120 distribution centres across the country.

“Warehouses in India, for long, are not part of the supply chain. Now that we are developing huge road and rail (special freight corridor), we need to evolve a nationwide network that efficiently connects the point of sales with the manufacturing sources,” Prof. N. Viswanadham, Executive Director of GLAMS told Business Line. “We need to have a green, lean distribution network backbone to lower costs and meet the demand-supply challenges. This is very important to make the Indian industry competitive globally. This network could be built in a public-private partnership model,” he said.

The definition of a warehouse was changed from the conventional sense of a storehouse to an inventory management set-up with value-added services.

“We have studied the existing and upcoming road, rail, port and aviation infrastructure in the country. And identified locations for setting up the distribution centres, covering a variety of business activities,” he said. The study focussed more on developing the network in tier-II and tier-III cities, which had potential to emerge as distribution centres. Stating that the warehouses in the West were equipped with IT solutions for better management of space and inventory, he said the proposed centres could deploy such tools.

ISB’s logistics studies centre is set to organise a five-day programme on ‘Global operations and supply chain excellence’ in January 2009. It is aimed at educating companies on increasing efficiencies in design and management of their supply chains.

More Stories on : Supply Chain Management

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