For any business it is imperative to have visibility in their supply chain processes, more so for a company like Apollo Tyres that’s spread across multiple geographies. Changing trade agreements, government regulations or the monetary values could end up delaying shipments. And every single delay is additional cost that can be avoided with better supply chain management.“The biggest challenge for us in the supply chain was to improve the accuracy in supply chain planning, management and execution. And accuracy and transparency come from data be it demand planning, truck availability, shipments or planning and productions. What we are trying to achieve is an integrated supply chain end to end and not just within a particular region, but globally,” said Hizmy Hassen, CDO, Apollo Tyres.
Data Integration is one of the most strategic digital projects that Apollo Tyres is working on right now.
“As we are trying to integrate our supply chain, the underlying important foundation is to have data consistency. We are trying to integrate the demand planning for say in the UK to all the way in India. This will help the relevant production units in the region,” he added.
This transparency, Hassen believes will help the company create better and more accurate planning in factories in India. Mainly because the production units are already running at a constrained capacity so for Apollo Tyres to continue to drive its growth, it is important to know how to continue to optimize its production.
“Earlier, different units at Apollo Tyres were fragmented, and each unit would act independently, treating another unit as an external customer or external supplier. Therefore, how each unit was placing orders with the others was inconsistent, there was a lack of lead time, a lack of transparency and didn’t allow adequate time for optimization,” Hassen explained.
To enable this optimization, Apollo Tyres is integrating demand planning/ sales forecasting from all distribution points globally using a single IT solution to all factories. The supply planning therefore is able to aggregate demand from around the world and use this aggregated demand (in near real time) to maximise lot sizing and production output. Where the company has production constraints, it is able to use one set of business rules to prioritise production.
The supply chain did not have effective visibility of demand until orders were placed at the last moment or in the case of interregional supply, there was a large lead time built for the ordering cycle. With the implementation of the new end-to-end supply chain solution, the ordering cycle has become near real time between two regions. The transparency and a common set of business rules also significantly reduce admin efforts in all parts of the supply chain.
“The end-to-end supply chain is about predicting the demand, receiving orders from customers, and getting the tyres in their warehouses at the right time. And Oracle Transport Management (OTM) is a key element of our end-to-end solution. That gives us effective shipment planning. It tells us, looking at the load that we have, what’s the best way to plan. As we are moving towards a positive market environment, we are hopeful that the demand will outstrip the supply,” Hassen explained.
In such situations, he feels the question is how to maximise freight. A tool like OTM integrated and receiving all the right information becomes key for prioritising what goes into each shipment, what is the right schedule, shipment schedule and capturing the right freight cost.
In order to bring transparency and remove the burden of getting inquiries from customers about their shipment, Apollo Tyres has been looking to stream data from OTM into its data lake.
“We can then present the data to customers in a format that is friendly to them. By having the data in the cloud and in a single data lake blended with other ERP data, we use data science to solve complex problems and drive greater efficiency in freight management and costs,” he concluded.
