hi this is sebastian here uh say i am heading the operations in gray supermarket here so i'm handling the iit and replenishment supply chain process here so we have 28 outlets in chennai so out of that 15 outlets are after big performance say 15 10 to 12 000 square feet those bigger format outlets and another 13 outlets are smaller size say around 2000 square foot so we have a centralized purchase model where we are buying all the products in one place at our house that is of 60 000 square feet size so from there we are supplying to the store every day so we use two modes of support three modes of supplies one is flow through model where the stock will come on the same day and get dispatched from the warehouse on the day itself and another is a put away model where we used to get articles every week and supply to the store every day uh so we keep us talk of the products in our warehouse for seven to eight days and another model is a direct store supply where the supplier will be issued with the po and he'll be supplying to our store directly so these are the three modes we were using which we are using previously we used to do manual lot of manual things so now we started using say after we started using ia most of the things that got automated say i'll tell you the journey say first we started with individual store supplies in 2010 2014 we were doing the store managers in the store used to give the orders at that time we had 12 stores so they used to give the orders and they will receive the goods the payment will be made centralized so we used to do the payment centralized pay then that comes our warehouse so we started our warehouse operation in that time we entered into a new software which is go frugal that supported us decentralized consolidated purchasing and centralized spo indenting auto intending process and all initially for auto engine process we used to six min fixed min max quantity and every month we used to fix that and to make it dynamic say i have to review it every week say first week one minute max quantity second week on the next quantity that is that way we work so after that say once we started crossing 20 stores we were not able to do that manual process because say it depends on people so one guy used to do that everything and one mistake will spoil the total replenishment cycle so then we were looking for some auto artificial intelligence ml based solution and then came i the implementation since we are using group frugal the implementation is very simple say within a week or two we got the implementation done since because our master is very clear since we are into centralized model we were able to maintain our master very cleanly with all categorizations and all and essential data for aml to work so after that within a couple of weeks we were able to onboard it then the issues are say that the challenges we faced initially was our store mantra is keeping more and sell more in modern trade people used to say say what is you what you sell keep it there that's enough but ours is say if your product is selling three piece you will not keep three pieces we'll keep 12 pieces so that the counter will looks good so in some products we used to keep 30 for 30 days stock for some products we used to give 60 days talk some products we used to give 10 day structure which is the ideal number of days for a weekly supply so in those areas the presentation start issue we face then some malware intervention by fixing the number of holding days reserve is categories say items are classified into a b c x so based on that we used to categorize those items and keep the number of days as per it so for a category i used to keep 10 to 12 days like that say for x which are slow movers so we used to keep more stocks to look at good in the counter so we used to kill max party party payday stocks in that category so this way we work and the the store replenishment part got over and the team is very good at handling those say if i'm raising an issue or giving an use case they are able to do it in a week or max in a month so for example say capturing the extra margins you are getting for a particular product are replacing say for example sq a will be supplied then suddenly the the vendor stops applying a and the same replacement the replacement sp will be launched so mapping that sp with gay sales with b to start the replenishment again in the right way so those features and everything see a lot of other features say for example margin barge and other things the fill rate analysis communication to the vendors the supplier wall where the vendor is shared the link to access the suppliers that their metrics their filtrates their views their holding stocks and everything so very useful and we are extensively using that and the communication automation is also a major area where we reduce the manpower say previously what is like say a person will download the q and send it to send it to the supplier say he may forget to send the po then the supplier will call us and ask for the viewer now it's automated then it will automatically go to the supplier based on the schedule so those automations and all reduce the manpower you see a new store opening uh previously say we i involved in this company for at least 17 stores opening so we opened eight stores without a and the seven stores will die so for the initial eight stores what we used to do is we used to do a lot of calculation based on the targeted reference store area and all and the number of skews we need to keep the size of the store and everything we used to do a lot of manual calculation and fix the mbq based on that and they will issue viewers separately so my supply chain my barrows used to handle double the volume double the volume is double the number of uh escapes for example if a supplier is supplementing supplying me 100 skus for all the 27 outlets i will be issuing a separate view and for the new outlet i'll be issuing another separate view so the supply chain is forced to handle 200 items at a time so we used to face lot of manpower issue mistakes while receiving and all then after i came say what we what we are doing right now is just pick a store of same reference say same size locality and customer base then map it with the new store so based on the reference store we keep the number of days for say for example footage articles so many days flow through so many days dsd so many days then the po got automatically raised and what's the beauty is that in the same pivot so on a single view this uh quantity will get added and then the allocation be on a single view we will get the quantity and the allocation is done on a single go so what this have made was that in supply chain instead of 200 articles they are able to handle 100 articles so that the issue is solved the next thing is the manual calculation the manual error and all solved another important thing is say we fix the quantity but after opening the store this based on the store performance we have to change that so in manual thing it will take at least six months for to activate on it but the eye is able to act in couple of months say based on the sale improvement in sale it will immediately increase the quantity immediately the next week itself it started increasing the quantity if it is a low sale after within three months it will analyze it and then it will reduce the quantity we are sending to the store in that way say my inventory cost was optimized and my fill rate say fill rate to the store the service to the customer because so if a sale is improving then i have to manually adjust it but we were doing it after six months only after a week after six months only now the eye is acting on immediately and the next week it's if i'm sending a new for a new store if i'm sending 20 pieces of particular rescue use and it got sold in the third day itself the next time i will automatically increase the quantity and send party pieces for the next week so based uh in that way i am able to get more sales from new stores and immediate pickup is happening there so in certain source where we thought the sales would be very less so we kept a lower stock and all suddenly say this the store unexpectedly started picking up and with the help of i say within three four months we went up by 50 to 60 sales what we accepted from expected from the new store so this type of dynamic i would say dynamic uh change in the holding stock that is very important so can be done and as far as new store opening is concerned it's like a cakewalk see i'm never worried about that the only thing is i have to select the correct reference tool so once it's done it will automatically push the required indents in the po and you will get the start the major part where we reduce the man coverage analytics analytics we previously we used to download in excel we looked at pivots and other things we used to do and charts and all that we used to do that now the question with the i say sales and purchase for a particular name then we have to choose the grand or subcategory whatever it will show you that where you can get it otherwise the daily news page where we used to get all the data in one page based on the data available so it will show you the lot of metrics here which is very useful for you and the various excellence service excellence report where we can find the efficiency of the wearers the stockholders report the audit articles to audit report where some anomalies with a stocks mismatch which is there this is very useful say that stockholders articles to audit reporters very much useful for us because say due to pilferage and all we used to face tacos being a chain of stores and having 365 days business we are not able to do full stop take where we used to do use this articles to audit report and send it to the store there we will do the perpetual audit and write off or correct anomalies there in the system so say the scope is endless it's up to the person who is using it other to the team which is using that and the understanding of the people say since we are a chain of supermarkets we have very high level of usage with eye so the customer insight is the only one thing they are building it and also we are not also capturing the data now we started capturing the data and also we are seeing that in reports the number of people repeatedly coming to the stores number of people repeatedly buying a particular product a particular category their the month on month or year on year the drop is there reserve is the sale quantity volume and with respect to the customers also say we are getting the reports though those insights are very very very much useful for us to act proactively and analyze the trend if it is with the general trend okay we will leave it but if it is some abnormal variations are there then we'll act upon it and correct it so in that way it is very useful for us to act immediately say for example within a month we can identify some the major issues happening with us for example with our pricing or with our supply chain with the filtrate or availability of a particular product for example say last month we had an issue there is no supply we thought okay we can replace the oven with another other brand but still people didn't buy ghee from our store so there is a huge drop in ghee sales in terms of volume value and number of customers speaking also so that we analyzed and say we are trying to correct that in that way lot of this is one of the case in that way a lot of cases are there we can find issues and alterate your purchasing and your supplier things and as far as see currently the trend is very dynamic so market is every day evolving so these types of insights will will give you the trend also say by way of fundamental analysis so you can understand it say certain things but you have you have to evaluate the technical things which is showing through raw data so these technicals and fundamentals can give the correct output of what is going on in the market so since it's very dynamic a postcode the huge variations are they say initially a revenge consumption was happening now uh sedated consumption is happening so things are changing very frequently so based on that you can manage your inventory your roa and everything so in that way yes it's a for retail it's it's a total solution as far as supply chain and managing the businesses because everything based on supply chain as far as supermarket business that will be the sales of this business where you are not able to where the decision maker buying decision maker is not able to interact with the persons who are buying where there is very less interaction between the buyer and the seller so they are the tool like i can help you in a big way market is also a little bit on the weaker side now as far as later since the inflation is going up the consumption is also getting reduced so there then you have to find alternatives also ones for the other there also you you can find some reasons the issues with the supply chain or the product selection or product mix availability and the trend in buying patterns and everything you can alternate alter your purchase a model as far as dive for a bigger business say for us it's very useful say wherever a person is willing to automate things it can be done very easily and very effectively at a very reasonable cost that is very very important because say a ml related solutions are there but those are all very highly priced and they say even though we have multiple chain of supermarkets retail in retail the margins are very thin so that need to be taken into account so previously when aml is there for 10-12 years it's there but now people are coming with say like a guy team like deliam technologies people are coming up with the solutions but this is a refined one the refined one say we are using it for almost four four and a half years see first year okay little bit raw and second year we find and it's like now it's like a mercedes-benz it's 100 refined and now it it is it is exciting us with new new releases and new data it's throwing new new insights and everything so all our needs are uh as far as supply chain automation and analytics is concerned it's mostly we are mostly covered only thing is uh customer insights that is pending because we we are not getting collecting the data in all the outlets so on a trial basis we started collecting in two outlets there we are able to see the results and it is encouraging us to collect in all the other outlets and as far as inventory management is concerned yes we can play along say for example say if i want to pump more stock so for example in here and if i want to pump more stock to show the closing stock on the higher side i can pump the stock with a small tune up that too unwanted uh say dumping of stocks and if i want to say reduce my working capital i can say pull the plug say slightly so for example instead of keeping 12 15 days talk in a category i can put 10 days even though still it is enough to serve the customer one day this is the presentation would be less that's not an issue so we can play along that say for example if i my my management wants me to reduce the holding start a couple of close say i can immediately do it i can immediately do the changes so it's all based on the values there you can say alter the rounding up to the supply um say couple of weeks back we had that year end we did that for uh reducing the holding start we in the year end we did that and for first week sales i was able to push the stocks immediately say for 10 days i reduced the quantity and then after the 10 days we started pushing the stocks so in that way you can play around and another one more thing is companies say brands will come up with visibility proposals so they they will invest 20 000 for an end cap and all so previously what we do is we manually calculate it and send the stars but it will take a lot of time say for example 10 we have 28 so if a guy is giving a proposal for 10 stores that do for a particular set of squares then i have to download the excuse the number of days and all those calculations it will take at least half an hour to an hour for a person to do that correctly now what i'll do is i'll filter the rescues along with the stores and then put the values there i'll generate one po say if the po is of the higher value then i can reduce it within within a minute the calculations will come and i'll reduce the quantities with respect to the number of days or increase it if the supplier is launched most people so everything is based on number of days so what will happen what will help you is say you can reduce the dumping of the stock say for example a company is coming to us and i'm putting 60 days talking it will send only the 60 days talks beyond that it will not be there so since the guy is investing us we can give 60 days talk no but while doing manually if a guy suddenly gives say 10-15 cases extra means then it will held up we had experience we have we had experience of returning the stocks after the disability got over now we never faced that issue after using this haddock future in i uh say we never face that issue because it's all based on the number of days we are giving so the returning of articles once the visibility is over never happened for the past two years because we started using that for the past couple of years and we never faced that issue so for a self-service supermarket point of view this is and that too far centralized purchase from my side say i am doing a centralized purchase module so this is one of the best solutions available best and frugal solution i would say say you should not waste energy or money in this solutions that's why so available in the market you can go for it you
2022-07-02