Robotic Enhancement Can Play A Significant Role In Supply Chain Infra: Experts

Enhanced robotisation and mechanisation in terms of supply chain infrastructure can play a significant role in the industry. The connotation regarding automation needs to be revised while curtailing the hurdles and challenges for successful adoption, said experts.

“As a consumer in B2B and B2C scenarios, the expectations have been the same. The consumer expects on-time and in-full delivery from the supply chain system. In doing so, firms had the advantage of improvement in technology which enabled efficiency. Most firms also began to use supply chain as a differentiation. For instance, an e-commerce firm wants to ensure super-fast delivery and B2B organisations in the textile value chain with the advent of fast fashion want to ensure apparel reaches on time and reduce turn-around time. Customers have also become conscious that their brands should have sustainable norms,” said Suraj Bahirwani, Senior President and Global Sales Head of Pulp & Fibre Business, Aditya Birla Group.

Ashwin Rao, Business Head, Warehouse Automation, Blue Star Engineering and Electronics said, “To ensure specific requirements of distributor and retailer, ability to store and meet demand and on-time delivery is now possible with automation. All these requirements add a lot of complexity to supply chain management. This is the era of supply chain managers, and that's where automation plays a pivotal role.”

He further added automation can play a role across the entire supply chain. The manual tasks of loading, unloading trucks, storage and dispatch, all these cumbersome processes have been automated. Automation has enabled the standardisation of the processes, more it has also connected the retailer to the warehouse.

Ashish Jha, Head of Supply Chain at India, Electrolux said, “Robotics is still new in the Indian market with the market size of USD 5 billion and a growth of 13 per cent CAGR. After the pandemic, the diverse range of robotics has come into use due to a lot of supply chain disruption, surging demand, social distancing and restrictions on manual labour. For instance, Walmart uses drones for end-customer delivery to reduce time. The cost of investment for these robotics is quite huge, in the Indian market the return on investment (ROI) is yet to be discovered.”

“Automation has given us detrimental thoughts, like loss of jobs, outperformance of human skills, huge costs etc. Conversely, it can be engaged in the training of employees and will lead to upskilling people. Additionally, it has an imperative role in planning and risk management,” said Sharmishtha Niyogi, Supply Chain Director, Merck Group.

Speaking at the BW Supply Chain Competitiveness event, Sreenivas Rao Nandigam, Global Head, Supply Chain, Sun Pharma, concluded the session with his perspective on robotics in the existing system.

“Robotisation is not about taking away jobs, rather it has made it easier. The working hours have been reduced and the ability of robots to lift heavy loads has resisted labour to refrain from such hazardous activities. However, the fear does exist, but it is the responsibility of supply chain management to mitigate such sentiments.”

He further asserted that ROI in robotisation is based on its utility. Labour cost savings far outweigh the capex, places at which humans can't work and the limited capacity of physical infrastructure to employ thousands of people make robotics ‘business sensible’ to reduce such barriers.