Sustainable Supply Chain

Supply Chain Next - A Chat With HCL's Sukant Acharya

September 26, 2022 Tom Raftery / Sukant Acharya Season 1 Episode 257
Sustainable Supply Chain
Supply Chain Next - A Chat With HCL's Sukant Acharya
Digital Supply Chain +
Become a supporter of the show!
Starting at $3/month
Support
Show Notes Transcript

The Internet of Things has a huge influence on Supply Chains. To talk a bit about this, and what HCL calls Supply Chain Next, I invited Sukant Acharya who leads HCL's IoT Works business to come on the podcast.

We had a fascinating conversation I learned loads, I hope you do too...

f you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to leave me a voice message over on my SpeakPipe page or just send it to me as a direct message on Twitter/LinkedIn. Audio messages will get played (unless you specifically ask me not to).

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it. Thanks.

And remember, stay healthy, stay safe, stay sane! 

Elevate your brand with the ‘Sustainable Supply Chain’ podcast, the voice of supply chain sustainability.

Last year, this podcast's episodes were downloaded over 113,000 times by senior supply chain executives around the world.

Become a sponsor. Lead the conversation.

Contact me for sponsorship opportunities and turn downloads into dialogues.

Act today. Influence the future.



Support the show


Podcast supporters
I'd like to sincerely thank this podcast's generous supporters:

  • Lorcan Sheehan
  • Krishna Kumar
  • Olivier Brusle
  • Alicia Farag
  • Joël VANDI
  • Luis Olavarria
  • Alvaro Aguilar

And remember you too can Support the Podcast - it is really easy and hugely important as it will enable me to continue to create more excellent Digital Supply Chain episodes like this one.

Podcast Sponsorship Opportunities:
If you/your organisation is interested in sponsoring this podcast - I have several options available. Let's talk!

Finally
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast - feel free to just send me a direct message on Twitter/LinkedIn.

If you liked this show, please don't forget to rate and/or review it. It makes a big difference to help new people discover it.

Thanks for listening.

Sukant Acharya:

Just in time is giving way to just what matters, and what matters changes with time. So your static model of targeting what has to be produced, what has to be shipped, what has to be consumed, at a particular time and therefore planning your supply chain according to that, may not be good enough

Tom Raftery:

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the digital supply chain podcast the number one podcast focusing on the digitization of supply chain and i'm your host Tom Raftery Hi, everyone. Welcome to the digital supply chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and with me on the show today, I have my special cast Sukant. Sukant. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Sukant Acharya:

Yeah, thanks Tom. Hi everybody. I'm Sukant Acaraya Senior vice president and global head of IOT, IIOT and industry next business in HCL. Over the last 25 years, I have worked in different industry segments and led diverse business portfolios in different leadership roles, across core industry verticals in management consulting, as well as in technology service and solution providers. To a point. I always describe that, you know, I have seen the industry from different angles, working within the core industries, as well as looking at it from a technology and digital transformation perspective from a management consulting perspective. And I cover my responsibility cover, as I mentioned is you know, the ones across the globe, across industry verticals and focused primarily on the digital transformation linked to this hyper connected world. And taking it beyond the industry four dot zero, and helping clients derive the value out of their digital initiatives. You know, delivering the hyper connected industry imperatives I'm based in US, in Michigan. But you know, pretty much In, in the airlines, you know, traveling to different locations and different industry, different companies, different industry medias, and and so on and so forth. So, happy to be here. Thanks Tom, for having me and looking forward to the discussion.

Tom Raftery:

Okay, super. But you mentioned a term there that people might not be familiar with. You mentioned industry next as part of your responsibilities. Can you explain to people, what is industry next?

Sukant Acharya:

Yeah. Great question, Tom. If we look back how the industry has evolved, you know, starting in 1764, when the industry one dot zero revolution came into being, which was actually the rise of factories, having a steam engine and you know, enormous bar and moving from manual labour intensive, expensive task to actually getting factory and mechanized operations to produce more, to produce more efficiently. And being more cost effective and catering to a larger market. From that to 2011, when industry four dot zero got coined, we, the industry has seen multiple evolutions. The first one we call as rise factory. The second is a flow manufacturing and flow supply chain in 1914 and then 1980s a major transformation around technology digitization. Global supply chain globalization took into effect and it brought a lot of change imperatives for the industry in general and supply chain in particular. And the hyper connected industry phenomena gave rise to industry four dot zero where things, assets, people, everybody getting connected, and the intelligent ecosystem got created putting another set of imperatives for the, for the organizations to embrace. When we say industry next. It is actually a model that helps organizations to stay ahead of the curve. Not really catching up on this phenomena of industry three dot zero industry 4 dot zero, because today, if you look at it, many companies classify themselves being at different stage of maturity in this industry four dot And there are use cases where they may classify themselves as being in industry three dot zero. The digitization is not complete. The transformation around robotics is not complete and they're still embracing and going towards industry four dot zero. And then what is the next many people have, you know, just 10, 11 years of industry four dot zero, and there has been discussion about industry five, zero and industry six, zero, and so so forth. I think it's an ever-changing world. What we believe the next is the rise of resilience. So how organizations and the supply chain within the organization can embrace the adaptability to the ever-changing scenario and be resilient be as I, that's what we define as industry next. And it is not static as you would. As you probably infer, it's a motion in continuum, but the model that you create. The innovation model, the transformation model that you create, how that will help you to adapt to various scenarios. You know, that may come up that is not for today and how in an agile and resilient way you you define and contour those scenarios to build sustainable advantage in the world. Now there are two major disruptive forces, which is actually leading to, to this this rise of resilience. One just in time in the context of supply chain, you know, we, we always relied, okay. Just in time probably is the holy grail and that solves many things and yes, it has produced result in 1980s, nineties, the concept to just in time manufacturing, Kanban and so on, so forth transformed the way supply chain actually works today, but it is no more enough. Just in time is giving way to just what matters and what matters changes with time. So your static model of targeting what has to be produced, what has to be shipped, what has to be consumed at a particular time and therefore planning your supply chain according to that may not be good enough. It has to be an agile model to sense what actually matters at what point of time and that and what matters keeps on changing with the time. The second big disruption that is happening the whole concept around supply chain. So when we talk about a chain, we immediately visualize it's like a sequence of steps from tier two to tier one to manufacturer or on the outbound, we can. Consider as you know, the producer to distributor, to warehouse, to retail and so on, so forth. So the assumptions and the fundamental assumption had been the value is created in these steps. The data flows in the steps, the products and assets and services flow in the steps. But what is happening today with this hyper connected industry scenarios emerging, this is no more like a chain. It is actually an ecosystem. It's what we call as supply ecosystem. And you do not need to go into these steps and every step waiting for the next to happen. The intelligence and the decision enablers has to be derived from all sources at all the time. And the predictive and prescriptive models can be created, whether it's a third party logistic. Whether it is your producer, whether it is your tier two supplier, whether it is even the environmental factors, maybe the geopolitical tests, right. So many. So part of the system within the system, as well as the inferences outside the system must be considered to enable the decision making on how the supply chain could be resilient and agile. So these are the two major factors which are disrupting, and that leads to our, offering in the market around industry next and supply chain next.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. Interesting. Interesting. I mean, what you're saying really is that the industry one industry, two industry three, industry four while they might have been perceived to be revolutions that from now on outward is going to be a lot of evolution rather than big revolutions that are happening. Is that, is that fair to say?

Sukant Acharya:

Yeah. So the way to imagine it the industry next is a utility model. And if you look at the revolution, right, from first industry revolution to second, it took the world 150 years from third to fourth, it took only 30 years. And from industry four dot zero today, people are talking about 5.0, 6.0 and, and, and many different names. It just has been 10 years or 11 years. So it is thinking, if you look at this, it is thinking, so the point is now where this is going to be iterative. And the reason for this is product life cycle is thinking the technology refresh cycle is thinking the innovations are becoming ever faster. What was you know, good yesterday is no more good today. So due to this life cycle changes, it is not prudent for the industries to benchmark and go on a five year, six year journey and plan to embrace one set of transformation, but to have a culture and an innovation model, they can continually consume the innovation that is happening in the world. Embrace that and adapt that to their industry scenarios and be resilient.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. So change becomes a constant, okay. For, something like that you're going to really need to, to allow yourself to be constantly resilient and agile, you're going to need far more digitization, right?

Sukant Acharya:

That is absolutely correct. That's absolutely correct. And that probably leads to, I mean, if you look at transformation, right, everybody talks about transformation. In fact if we do a search that 2.3 billion webpages are focused on uh, transformation. And it has been super pervasive and pretty much like every discussion you have, probably this is a word that comes, comes up, but still there are 300,000 plus you know, searches every day on this topic. So what, what, why is it this right? I mean, transformation is not new. Industry has been transforming overages supply chain has been transforming overages, you know, I mean, think about the, arms length trans and batter system in the age, old world to today's global diverse complex ecosystem of you know, supply ecosystem to support the global business. There has been tremendous transformations and both on the business front technology, front and technology enabled business transformations. But what is new. In this transformation and, and why this, you know, constant change and technology intervention, constant technology adaptation going to be very very important is that today's transformation is in, that is different. It is the scale and speed, which you know, characterizes the transformation of today. I mean, you imagine you know, almost 4 billion people got vaccinated around the world in just 12 months. And we are talking about 2.4 trillion of digital spend in 2024 And, and the amount of change because the innovation is happening not within the four walls of an organization, but is actually a lot happening outside the four walls of an organization. So the amount of information that the organization need to consume, the amount of innovation they need to embrace and therefore an you know, use those innovation to transform their operations is huge. So the scale of transformation is very, very, very big today when we, you know, if we compare the past several years, in fact research findings says that in 2020 in the 21st century, the world will see a transformation equivalent to the last 20,000 years, not a hundred years of transformation and innovation, but 20,000 years. So then we can imagine not just the quantum of innovation and transformation, but also the speed at which it is changing. So I think those are the two important factors and, and the only way to go at that speed. And embrace that momentum of change effectively to produce result is suitably taking the technology intervention and using it to make the operations more effective and efficient.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. And for any supply chain professionals who are listening to this podcast now, what kind of advice, would you give them if they're embarking on a digitization journey?

Sukant Acharya:

Yeah. So I think that's again, a great question, every organization you talk to, and obviously I interact with CXOs you know, pretty frequently every organization you talk to the scenario is different. The perspective is different. The challenges are different and the way they're approaching is different. But there is one common theme. Which sometimes get ignored and few companies who understand and adapt that are very successful taking the lead in how they transform their, their supply chain. First and foremost, as I mentioned the thinking that it is not a chain. It is a system. It is an ecosystem. And the moment you think about an ecosystem, then you think about these are not the trans or accents that happens within my organization, within the four walls of my supply chain function, but it is actually more pervasive. So my supply chain has a big impact to my after sales operations as the product. Are going to be sold as service. There is a lot of chains happening in that direction. My supply chain has a big impact to my R&D. So these are all within the organization, but my supply chain strategy and operations has a big impact on the downstream, as well as on the upstream tier one tier two how they operate. And also to the, the enablers, like, 3PL logistics and the environment, you know, geopolitical situation and transport. So the moment of thinking about a system, changes the perspective, changes the digital intervention and the solution you need to to implement, to harvest on this capabilities that is around in the world. And there are many examples around that. The second I would say is the thinking around the speed and scale. If you look at it, you know, every time the pal approach has been incremental change, incremental innovation. And we are at a point today, we are talking about a supply chain crisis. So imagine the supply chain had been transforming itself over the years. Lot of improvement, lot of technology intervention has happened, but the entire world is in a supply chain crisis today. So we, we need to take a step back and. rethink. What happened then? I mean, we have been embracing technology, you know, cloud analytics, digital IOT, and, and so on, so forth, but we are not ready. So, the, the answer to that question is the inability , to think about the art of the possible and the inability to think speed and scale. So the moment we think about things at speed and scale, we think of digital transformation at scale, we don't think of digital transformation as an incremental one step digitization. We think about a systemic approach of what processes has to change, what technology interventions make sense and what impact it creates in this supply ecosystem. So those thinking, and those are the two big things that I will actually leave with the supply chain practitioners, when they think of digital transformation, what they need to think of.

Tom Raftery:

Fantastic. Do you have any examples you can speak to of successful projects that you guys have been involved in the rollout of?

Sukant Acharya:

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. And there are many actually. So let me take a couple of examples. This is for an office equipment manufacturer having 60,000 plus industrial customers, 500 plus partners and having a big problem around revenue leakages because of spurious parts and you know, the service revenue going down because there is no control, no visibility around what is happening at the point of consumption. So we partnered with the organization and you know, looked at the overall scenario, how things are happening and what are the impact scenarios where, what are the source of supply? What are the source of consumption? What is the what are the business process to cater to that scenario in today's world? And with the enablement of you know, augmented reality enabled remote tracking live assessment of the equipment, health, and therefore predicting the value and therefore planning the supply and spare parts for the organization and linking that to a global distribution system to cater to 60,000 plus customers with different locations, different size, different scale, different models of the products, like a complete. Collaboration suite of modules for the supply ecosystem and linking to also the third party service providers that this organization actually, you know, contracts for, for the service to happen. In three years the company recouped over 600 million of lost revenue. And obviously the process enabled a big impact on the bottom line because more efficient, spare parts, planning, more efficient inventory management and avoidance of obsolescence which is a, was a byproduct of that was obviously a delighted customer base. And I'm sure that leads to more sales, more repeat sales though it was not tracked as part of this initiative, but definitely, you know, a delighted customer always comes back your loyalty, improves and so on. So forth. So that's I think one, big example where the supply chain giving way to supply ecosystem and creating a model for a supply next paradigm, where the system can adapt and easily embrace the new technologies that is coming on the way. And, and like a permeable innovation model where continuous adaptation of of the priorities from ecosystem partners and enabling a system that caters back to the customers as well as your partners. The second example, if I can take it's in a very different scenario, consignment inventory for medical equipment. And this company leading medical equipment manufacturer the revenue stream is they're responsible for the inventory at the providers and the hospitals. And they're paid based on the usage. But they're responsible for carrying that inventory in this, in the hospitals. So imagine you have thousands of providers and different locations of those providers and you have high value equipments, and each of the equipment, you know, like 3000 to $20,000, there are the surgery equipments. For specialized service stuff. And, and, and there are items which were also very simple. Like, you know, if it expires then it cannot be used. How do you get the visibility in that scenario? Just thinking about your own operations, because here the providers are involved, the consumption point of the providers, you are responsible for the inventory in there. So we implemented a solution that takes a co-partnership of the providers, as well as the manufacturers slash supplier in a model where automatic tracking and tracing of the assets, that are there at the provided place at any point of time, automatic dispensing with traceability link as to what purpose it has taken out, which one to take out and automatically trigger of what to pick and where to pick from like something is expiring, I have bad scores of last year versus this year. The earlier scenario as anybody can go, the doctor can go, the nurse can go and pick anything that is. And from the shelf, but can you have an intelligent system and dispensing cabinet where it'll actually not allow you to pick the new one? If the old one is available. Which is actually expiring and then linking it back to the real time visibility to the provider to the sales people who are actually responsible for the consignment, you know, relationship the provider, and also linking it back to the manufacturer itself as to what is getting consumed. What demand might be coming and therefore what, how the products and run can be adjusted so that we can capture more market and then take the competitive share. So it's again, a, a, cross boundary transformation leading to a supply chain next, where completely rethinking the way the supply chain can, or the supply ecosystem can perform in tomorrow's world.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. Superb, superb, normally at this time of the podcast, Sukant I, I ask people, you know what, what's coming next, where to from here kind of thing, but your industry next and supply chain next have kind of anticipated that and said, that it it's just constant change, but I'm gonna ask the question anyway, where, where to from here for industry next and supply chain next.

Sukant Acharya:

Yeah. Great. A great question Tom and see if you look at it, right. Industry next and whatever industry, other revolutions that people talk about, the difference is in the approach. So where the earlier approach was a static target. You have few things and that is the target. And therefore what roadmap you make to go there. The fallacy in that approach was the target is actually not static and should not be static because the consumer behavior is changing. The world is changing. The capabilities that you can use is changing. So therefore having a static roadmap does not work. So industry next continually changes that target and with the model that the companies can embrace it in a simple and effective way. And how that happens is designing microservices and thinking about it permeable innovation. So you do not build monolithic transformation, digital solutions, you think of microservices approach, which are adaptable. Which which can change in the given scenario, it is highly portable. You can link to different functions and different services within the organization. So it, it, it all depends on how you design this transformation. So industry next, the, the guiding principle is a design thinking, enabled approach on how to solve a problem, but more than that, a practical iteration. Of the design principles to design the solution that can be Futureproof that can be scalable. That can be expansive. So it comes to at the design states. And then even if your targets keeps changing from today to six months down the line, you don't redo you actually build on. Because you have the foundation that is adaptive and that's where organizations fail. So large initiatives. If you see the supply chain transformation, you would digitize and go and implement a solution next two years, three years, by the time you complete, the organization realizes that it is not good enough because in two, three years, world has moved. So, so that's the fundamental difference. So the next piece, fixing your design, fixing your design of how you implement the solution. So our framework actually brings the guidelines, the templates, the baseline, what has worked, what has not worked, how to think this problems and put in the perspective and what are the design limits to consider when you deploy these solutions to the market.

Tom Raftery:

Okay, super, super we're coming towards the end of the podcast now Sukant. Is there any question that I haven't asked you that you wish I had, or any aspect of this, we've not touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Sukant Acharya:

Yeah, I think one, one thing, if, if it helps the listener that I would bring up. So every time when we think about transformation, it becomes an overwhelming topic. When you talk about supply next you know, supply ecosystem, supply chain next we need to think of the layers of transformation and how they actually come together. And I put it in a very simple way that think of tracking as one layer. So its a means, what, how much, probably, you know, another dimension to that is when. I mean, it's pretty much backtracking as to, you know, this material was available or is available at this point, and this is the characteristics and take it to the next level, which is supply chain or supply ecosystem is systemic approach of collaboration. Where you get all the partners and partner equations into the mix, you design and decide your digital transformation so that it stays, adaptive, future proof and you become resilient because the chains in your partner ecosystem or the other players must not affect the the overall planning to the extent that is happening today. So it has to be resilient and you need to factor those elements. And the next level of or the next is aiming towards a cognitive supply chain where it is predictive. Prescriptive based, you know, bringing in the IML analytics based on the past, based on the current context and as well as taking the data and insights from the interventions. So if you, if we, if we break it into different layers, which are actually interdependent, it becomes an easy journey to embrace the change and take it to the next step.

Tom Raftery:

Okay. Super, super great. Sukant that's been fascinating if people want to know more about yourself or about supply chain next, or industry next, or any of the topics we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Sukant Acharya:

Yeah. So, they can visit the HCL website. We have a the business that I lead is IOT works and there's a, there's a web page on IOT works where all these approach solutions the blogs, white papers, case studies this solution, the IP based products and with the collaboration with you know, companies like SAP, Microsoft, and others, you know, everything you'll actually find there. And then how do we actually co-create these solutions? With our ecosystem partners like yourself and and how we, we, we deploy that for the benefit of our global customers. So that would be a best best approach to go there. And I'm available on LinkedIn. So, Sukant Acharaya at LinkedIn so anybody interested can, can connect me there.

Tom Raftery:

Cool. Great I will put those links in the show notes so everyone will have access to them. Sukant. That's been great. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Sukant Acharya:

Yeah, thanks. Thanks Tom. For having me it was a pleasure. Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, simply drop me an email to TomRaftery@outlook.com. If you liked the show, please, don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice, to be sure to get new episodes. As soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.

Podcasts we love