The highly anticipated event chronicled the legends in the business of sweat and success, which have pioneered the finest practices in supply chain management. It was launched in the year 2004 and the response from industry has been overwhelming with cases from leading companies including Ashok Leyland, Asian Paints, Cummins, Gillette, Marico, M&M;, Maruti, MICO, Nicholas Piramal, Ranbaxy, Shoppers Stop, Titan Industries, Tata Motors and Tata Steel.

This year the evaluation was done by the jury members comprising of a panel of supply chain management experts including Prof. G Raghuram, Professor, IIM Ahmedabad, Prof. M. Korgaonkar, Director General, NICMAR, Mr. Surku Sinnadurai, MD, I2 Solutions, Mr Gaurav Asthana, VP, Renoir Consulting, Mr Sachin Mirashi, Country Head, CSL, P&G;, Mr. Sunil Gera, AGM Operations and Prof. Jamshed Modi, Professor, Manufacturing and Operations, SPJIMR. The winners were selected based on the tangible and intangible benefits and impact of the innovative supply chain management solution on the overall business and the long-term sustenance of the initiative.

After the enlightening paper presentations by the six short listed companies, there was a panel discussion on the topic ‘Vision for developing a logistic solution for India in the new millennium’ chaired by Prof. M. Korgaonkar, Director General, NICMAR and included Prof. G Raghuram, Professor, IIM Ahmedabad, Mr. Niraj N Ambani, Sr. VP, Reliance Logistics Ltd., Mr. Nishit Kumar, Head, Awareness and Advocacy, Childline India Foundation and Mr. S. Harinarayanan, Member, National Committee on Logistic Services, Confederation of Indian Industries (CII).

The panel discussed the challenges in supply chain management in India, highlighting the issues of capacity constraint, infrastructure, technology, planning process, regulatory and strategic concerns of logistic service providers and private sector companies. The sweeping revolution in supply chain practices across companies in India has come at a most appropriate time creating a profound impact on our country’s economy. The solution lies in a collaborative framework, so that the smaller associations co longer view each other merely as competitors. Logistics and supply chain needs to be treated like a silo and the parameters should be driven more that business objectives than targeting just the logistic issues; logistic strategy has to be a pass through process. It is integral to correlate planning process and adapt logistics when changes take place in the organization. Mr Ambani reiterated that the impact would be the transition from operational and functional bias to domain knowledge for collaboration. Multi-modalism is driven by logistics; Prof. G Raghuram said that we are far from the minimum requirements and there is great scope for entrepreneurship in this domain. Open investment in infrastructure, IT solutions to business problems, reduction in government exercising management control, need to reduce liability gap in funding, better risk assessment and regulatory framework were the suggestions provided by the panel. The right amount of professionalism is important in organizations and we need to step up branding to provide sustainable qualities to the end users.

Mr. S. Harinarayanan spoke about better integration and fine-tuning of the existing models to fill the gap between companies, suppliers and customers. The human dimension to supply chain management practices was provide by Mr. Nishit Kumar, with his insight into the need for building supply chain solutions in the social realm and breaking existing supply chains to save lives. He spoke about his organization Childline, which is a 24-hour phone outreach help line for children, which receives 2.5 million calls per year, 20% of the world’s children’s help line.

The grand finale was the awards ceremony and after much debate and deliberation the jury presented the prestigious SSEA to TATA Motors for their very well put together and relevant ‘E-sourcing innovations’ paper. The jury reiterated that the company had shown excellent application of innovation in today’s dynamic business context by professionalizing it successfully throughout their company. Mr Sailesh Chandra, divisional Manager and Mr. Anurag Verma, Divisional Manager, TATA Motors were all smiles when they went up to claim the coveted trophy and prize money of Rs 1,00,000/- as the participants rose to their feet to give the team a standing ovation. The second place of Rs. 75,00,000/-at this year’s SSEA was shared by TATA MOTORS and MARICO to an unremitting applause. The focus of TATA Motors moved from organization and supply to the customer end with their presentation on ‘Strategic Cost Management through Target Costing’. MARICO covered the social implication context of e-procurement in the agricultural sector presented on ‘Sourcing Transformation through E buying’. Dr. Tapan Bagchi, professor operations management awarded the TATA MOTORS and MARICO teams. As runners up, the MARICO team comprising of Senior Managers Mr Jaydip Mukhopadhyay and Mr. Ramaswamy Gnanial walked away with the trophy and prize money as the SPJIMR students gave a resounding cheer.