My focus has always been on leading Global Sourcing and Supply Chain Management practice. For most of the years, I have worked in Strategic roles building strategies for sourcing and procurement operations and converting them into profit centres from Cost centres. I am a game-changer bringing new concepts and adding values to the propositions.
Tell us about your background, journey, and upbringing.
I belong to a city called Aurangabad. I had studied engineering in the 1980s when I passed I was actually placed through the college campus.
My focus has always been on leading Global Sourcing and Supply Chain Management practice. For most of the years, I have worked in Strategic roles building strategies for sourcing and procurement operations and converting them into profit centres from Cost centres. I am a game-changer bringing new concepts and adding values to the propositions.
This insightful experience coupled with my passion has helped me delivering YOY - 8 to 10 % cost reductions in Automotive and hi-tech Mfg. MNCs through Value Engineering, Value Analysis, Tear Down, and Benchmarking activities.
In my Various leadership roles, I have handled most of the categories of Direct and Indirect Materials and Services. This includes engineering and non-engineering categories, Niche Categories and services, Commodities like Copper, Aluminum and Steel, etc. Worked on Art to Part solutions by involving in concept to design to production to market and complete Product life cycle management. Worked on Supplier Partners development and product development, Handled India localization, worked on low-cost countries sourcing, cost planning, cost management, etc.
I have worked in APAC - India / Japan and Singapore region for Japanese automotive MNCs and tire 1 companies for 17+ years.
Trained in Product Cost management in Japan, Practiced Value Engineering and Value Analysis along with tear down analysis of the sourced products - I am a global supplier quality development auditor and have audited more than 50 sites globally.
Frequent traveller working closely with businesses spread across the US, Europe, and Asia including Japan and China. have a natural flair for working with diverse cultures and demographics
I did consulting assignments on Automotive global supply chain operations resulting in reduced lead times and cost savings, have done consulting assignments for technology transfer for engineering and non-engineering products.
How did you choose this career path?
Honestly, when I was doing my schooling, I had no clue as to what has to be done. In those days there used to be a magazine called popular science and, I came across this magazine in a grand library. The library was close to where I used to live. I used to go to the library, pay the money in the book section and get the books.
I came across the books on popular sciences, popular mechanics. I decided to read them. I went through them. I read various other publications in those days about what was happening in the US and other parts of the world, especially in automotive.
That's how I decided that there were no branches such as an automotive branch, there were electrical, mechanical and civil. I decided to go to a general mechanical branch, complete my study and then probably enter into an automotive field.
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How has the supply chain changed over the years and what do you sense for the future?
Supply chain has come a long way. It used to be called as a buying activity or purchasing activity, when I initially started. Lateron, the world moved and it added other portfolio stuff like planning to delivering. All these have been included under the umbrella of supply chain.
Alot of evolution has taken place in last 20 years, especially in the last 8 years. Supply chain has been digitally transformed, in the sense that it used to be a lot of physical activity. But now, the physical activity has been highly reduced and it has become ad-based and it has got AI inbuilt into it and has got Machine Learning. The entire digital transformation which has happened in last 5 years is phenomenal.
Today, we are developing bots to run the supply chain. The bots are running the complete procurement to payment cycle. The orders are generated online and sent to the suppliers online. The portal suppliers accept the orders and the bots then remind the suppliers about the supplies.
What does your workday look like?
Todays work days has changed a lot. Earlier, in a typical manufacturing company what used to happen is that, the moment you clocked in your hours, then you start running after getting the material, there used to be shortages and it was a sort of fire fighting all the time.
For the best of the best companies, including the automated brands also had shortages. And I'm not saying today, there are no shortages, they're still there, but today what happens is since the entire supply chain or procurement and sourcing has actually moved into Dayton transformation.
You don't have to really call 10 people asking to get the positions and where is the material lying. You just log into your portal of your supplier or for that matter in an app and you know where the consignment is lying and getting delivered. Based on that you can plan the complete manufacturing activity, you change the manufacturing plan or you can make the manufacturing plan based on the availability of material.
So people are spending more time on transformation of these activities, these transactional activities or tactical activities. In the contract management space, when you negotiate the contract on a large scale, you get a lot of trends. Those trends help you out in knowing the pricing of the commodities which make your day easier.
What are some of the challenges of your job?
The biggest challenge is that the technology is chainging so fast, so we have to remain on the same page with the technology. Yesterday we were discussing SAP, today we're discussing about different stuff and tomorrow we might be discussing about any other new tool which is taking you one step ahead or giving you better kind of transformation or a better kind of visibility.
Today, the world is told that based on the data management, data analytics you actually try and conclude as to how your next one year, or next few months is going to be. Todays challenge is actually to work on the data, get the big data and to convert the data into various kind of insights and to work on those insights to convert them into manufacturing and revenue.
The use of technology is extremely high. So sometimes you need to update yourself to use those new technologies and data sets. The time management is sometimes a challenge as you are engrossed into so many things that you are sometimes unable to balance between work life and personal life.
What advice do you have for the people who want to work in this domain and how can they learn more about it?
I would say that they have to update themselves with the technological trends, they need to have the ability to be curious to know what's happening across the globe.
They don't have to go into any kind of fraternity or organization. Their eye should be open outside to the outside world. They can go to all the big companies and get to know what are they doing? What new invention? What big things are they doing in supply chain?
They can adapt to the technology, once they adapt to the technology, they can come to their own ideas and that's how they can be with the pace of the world. I was talking to many youngsters and people with almost more than 20+ years of experience in procurement and sourcing, I was shocked and surprised that many of them did not know how AI or ML is useful in digital supply chain.
It shows that we are not updated, and show that we do not know what's exactly happening in the supply chain industry. My advice to the younger generation or to those who want to come to this domain is that they need to be updated with the knowledge, they need to be curious and they need to learn new things.
For example, I was not learning analytics and then I realized that analytics is the basic thing that while you must know in Supply Chain. And so then I started learning analytics. That's how you need to update yourself now.
which is your favourite book and why?
Recently I read a book called "Ikigai". I am actually more into Japanese management. I learned that when I worked in Japanese companies for more than 20 years.I love the way Japanese work, think and the way they lie their life.
So this book actually talks about the Japanese secret to live a long and happy life. Okay. After six months I may be getting oficiallly retired. So I think I need to definitely read this book and practice what they practiced to live a long and happy life.
Interviewed by - Uzair
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