XIMB organized annual Business Conclave “Ashwamedh’18”
Bhubaneswar: “Ashwamedh’18”, the annual Business Conclave organized by X-Ops, the Operations committee of XIMB, took place at Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar on Saturday, 11th of August. The theme for this year’s conclave was “Sustainable Supply Chain Management: Indian Context”. This conclave was aimed at addressing the students at XIMB to help them gain new perspectives on sustainability in supply chain management for a better future.
Mr. Rajesh Kutty (Practice Director- Inspirage), Mr. Anindya Sundar Das (Head,Community Operations, UBER), Mr. Viswanathan Raju (Vice President, 3PL And Contract Logistics, AvvashyaCCI Logistics (All Cargo Group)), Mr. Debasish Mohapatra (Head (Project quality and Capability team),Shell), Mr. Viswanathan Rajamanickam (Head (Demand Planning- Adhesives), Henkel) were the speakers for the occasion. Prof. Arun Paul (Professor, Operations) served as the moderator for the event.
After ceremonial lighting of the lamp, the conclave was opened with the speech of Prof. Arun Paul. He explained how business itself is a supply chain, considering unstable consumption and depletion of resources, extreme weather and climatic conditions.
Thereafter, Mr. Rajesh Kutty, the first speaker of “Ashwamedh’18” started with explaining how digitalization can help reduce disruptions in supply chain by citing examples of two case studies: 3D printing and cloud computing. He spoke about how digitalization and implementation of Integrated Business Planning (IBP) gives visibility to manufacturers, suppliers, retailers and other stakeholders involved in the supply chain by reducing disruptive costs, time and energy without compromising on the growing needs of the customer.
The next speaker, Mr. Anindya Sundar Das, started to elucidate on how we can attain sustainability in supply chain by taking example of vehicles. According to him, we should focus on four major areas, which includes, optimization of needs of the customers, reducing consumption, replacement with better alternatives and eliminating unnecessary wants of the customer, which can altogether help in achieving sustainability.
The next speaker, Mr. Viswanathan Raju dived into how health and security of workers, energy consumption, inventory, and reconciliation are major areas that we need to work on apart from pollution. He opined that quality operations is the key to successful warehouse management.
Mr. Debasish Mohapatra was the fourth speaker of the day and according to him, sustainability is all about meeting energy requirements of the world in a responsible manner, considering energy. He stated that “Sustainability is all about planet, profit and people”.
The last speaker of the day was Mr. Viswanathan Rajamanickam who went on to say that “Sustainability is not only about employees, it is also about contractors and people we are not directly working with”. He concluded his speech by stating that sustainability cannot be ignored, it is something, which organizations need to incorporate at every level of product creation.
The enriching and thought-provoking speeches were followed by an interactive Q&A session with the guest speakers answering thoughtful and challenging questions posed by the students. This was followed by the launch of X-Ops’s operations magazine – “Ashwamedh”. The event concluded with a vote of thanks delivered by Ms. Ayesha Gupta, Shadow Member, X-Ops.