Supply chains are the circulatory system of the global economy, providing access to the things we need to support commerce and sustain life. Despite their vital importance, most people have traditionally had little appreciation of the complexity of supply chains, and only noticed them when they were disrupted during the pandemic. Even prior to COVID-19, their vulnerability and environmental impact had become major sources of concern. The responsibility for much of the physical movement, handling, and storage of products has been outsourced to specialized logistics service providers, whose operations are growing ever more complex, requiring specific competencies for effectiveness. For Crompton Greaves, supply chain efficiency and effectiveness is critical to its growth and productivity. The MDP was aimed at gaining insights into the competencies related to procurement, physical distribution and supply chain planning. The areas covered included Target & Benchmark Costing; Activity Based Costing; Managing Costs under Uncertainty, Transport Optimization & Warehouse Management; and Commodity Forecast.

Prof. Kumar Mohanty, Director Corporate Relations bagged the valuable MDP based on his excellent networking with the industry. Prof. Ashok K. Sar designed the MDP and coordinated delivery of the program.

Prof. Sushant Tripathy covered Transport Optimization & Warehouse Management with illustrations based on published best practices and hands-on exercises on optimisation using real-time data. Prof. Deepak Singhal illustrated the commodity forecast using the ARIMA time-series model. Prof. Saroj Routray illustrated Target & Benchmark Costing and Activity-Based Costing through case studies and created an opportunity for the participants to apply the learnt concepts. Prof. Ashok K. Sar presented a global overview of the supply chain management based on knowledge base from the World Economic Forum and presented a model to identify problems, elaborate problems, conceptualize the problem, collect data and interpret data to come up with solutions.

The feedback from participants on course content; relevance of the MDP to practice; meeting learning objectives; duration of sessions; training methods; overall presentation; course materials; and facilities are rated to be excellent.

A follow-up project has been created to analyse a set of problems using the learnt concepts, create solutions, evaluate the possible solutions and chose the optimum solution for execution.