Category Archives: Sustainability

Top 12 Challenges Facing India in the Decades Ahead – 12 – Infrastructure

When it comes to infrastructure in India, as Business-in-Asia.com notes, it really is A Long Road Ahead. China really is decades ahead of India in terms of its transportation and communication infrastructure. In India, airports, rail networks, roads and ports are all in desperate need of repair, expansion, replacement, and, in some regions, creation! As Manish Agarwal stated in A Passage to Modern India (PDF) in the Summer, 2013 issue of Gridlines, decades of underinvestment have left the country with dire deficits in such critical areas as railways, roads, ports, airports, telecommunications and electricity generation. In the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report for 2011-2012, India ranked 89th out of 142 countries for its infrastructure. In this light, it’s remarkable that India is ranked 9th in (nominal) GDP by UN, IMF, and World Bank!

Roads are terrible. In a country where 65% of all freight is transported by road, this is a supply management nightmare. In fact, the traffic situation is so severe that the maximum highway speed for trucks and buses is only 30-40 km per hour! (As per a report of the Sub-Group on Policy Issues of the Government of India’s Ministry Road Transport and Highways, found on the Ministry’s Web Site.) And with the urban population expected to increase by 33% in the next five years, the situation is only going to get worse before it gets better.

Even if India succeeds in spending the 1 Trillion allocation it has committed to between now and 2017 — targeted at three airports, two ports, an elevated rail corridor in Mumbai, and almost 9,600 kms of road, the congestion eliminated will only be a drop in the bucket in a country with 87 airports that offer commercial service (Source: Wikipedia), 13 major and 187 notified minor and intermediate ports (Source: Wikipedia) of which 139 are operable (Source: India Core), 64,460 kms of rail (which is the fourth largest rail network in the world, source: Wikipedia), and 4,236,000 kms of road in 2011 (Source: Wikipedia). Thus, even if India managed to achieve its plan of building 20 kms of road a day, or 7,300 kms a year, that would only increase the total capacity by at most 0.17% annually, and do almost nothing to address the severe over-congestion plaguing the urban areas and major trade routes. Especially when India is adding about four million four-plus tire vehicles every year and about eleven million two-wheelers.

The airport situation is just as bad. Even though the country has 87 airpots with commercial service, the India Planning Commission estimates that the country will need an additional 180 airports in the next decade — so improving 3 is not going to do much! (See the 12th 5-Year Plan from 2012-2017, page 21.)

The port situation isn’t any better. As per IndiaCore, the current capacity at major ports is overstretched. The major ports together have a capacity of 215 million metric tonnes (MMT) at 1997- 98 levels (and 288 metric tons at 2001-2002 levels). However, the traffic for total ports in India was worth 740.3 MMT in 2009 and 818.7 MMT in 2010 and this is expected to rise to 1,373.1 MT in 2015 at a compound annual growth rate of 7.6% a year. In other words, throughput increased by a factor of 4 during the zeroes and is expected to increase another 50% by the end of 2015. However, investment in Indian ports in the zeroes was a mere 2.5 Billion. (Source: “Global Investments in Ports and Terminals” on HFW.com) To put this in perspective, the US West Coast ports are investing 12 Billion (Source: Pacific Merchant Shipping Association) just to handle a few more hundred MMT.

When you consider the inadequacy of the road, rail, air, and ocean transport networks, one has to wonder how India is going to cope with the expected annual rate of increase of 12% for domestic cargo and 10% for international cargo over the next five years, at the same time passenger traffic is expected to increase 12% annually domestically and 8% annually internationally. It’s a huge challenge, and one that’s not going to be solved anytime soon.

Top 12 Challenges Facing India in the Decades Ahead – Prologue

India is the land of contradictions and, as outlined by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen, it certainly does have An Uncertain Glory ahead of it. It could very well be the 2nd largest economy in the world by 2050, or it could slip out of the top ten and hover three quarters of the way down the top 20 list. Why?

Despite the fact that the Republic of India boasts the 2nd largest population in the world, and the fact that it boasts the largest number of English speakers outside of the United States (Source: Wikipedia) it currently faces more challenges than any emerging country, and certainly any emerging country in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), and on some metrics, ranks worse than some of the poorest countries in Africa!

While it does have a great opportunity before it, it also suffers from some of the greatest misfortunes of any country on the planet, despite the fact that it is, at the same time, probably the greatest example of democracy on the planet. Consisting of 28 states, 7 union territories and 3.288 Million square kilometers, India has 22 languages of official status in the eighth schedule to the Indian Constitution, 7 major religious groups (Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Animist, & Jain), and caste based reservations as a result of the caste system that plagued India until the end of British rule! It also has 6 recognized national parties and 47 recognized state parties. (Imagine the difficulty of getting anything agreed on with that many different viewpoints butting heads!) To put this in perspective, in contrast, the United States, consisting of 50 states and 4 [unincorporated organized] territories, only has to deal with, at most, 2 major languages [English and Spanish] and almost 96% of Americans who declare religion are Christian. Furthermore, there are only 2 major parties and 3 minor parties (Libertarian, Green, and Constitution parties). So, the fact that India has survived, and grown (over the past thirty years in particular), as a constitutional democracy for 66 years is quite impressive.

But the fact remains that this constitutional democracy is plagued with problems and issues that have to be addressed, and solved, if the country is to continue to grow, and flourish in the coming decades, as some optimists are predicting. In the next twelve posts (over the next twelve weeks) in the series, SI will dive into twelve of the most prominent issues to present you with a clear picture of the major challenges that lie ahead of India in its quest to become the next great Asian superpower and the center of your global supply chain.

Stay Tuned!

While You’re Celebrating Your Thanksgiving in the U.S.

Think about what you can do to make the rest of the world, including the 870 Million people in the world who are chronically under-nourished, thankful as well.

As Procurement Pros, you have a lot of control over the global food supply whether you realize it or not. Money does talk, and with enough pressure, the supply chain will walk to your marching orders. And if those orders are appropriate, maybe we can prevent half of the food being produced going to waste.

According to The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, roughly 1/3rd of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year, approximately 1.3 Billion Tons, gets lost or wasted — due to losses during harvesting, storage, transport, and processing. This loss is almost four times what would be needed to feed all of the chronically under-nourished people in the world, and part of the reason food reserves are at an all time low.

And to make matters worse, the growth, and partial harvesting, storage, transport and / or processing produces 3.3 Billion tons of CO2 emissions and wastes precious water and energy resources. So, not only are people starving when there should be enough food, but we’re wasting limited fresh water and energy in the production of the food that is being wasted.

In developing countries, 40% of this loss is occurring at post-harvest and processing levels due to financial, managerial, and technical constraints in harvesting techniques as well as storage and cooling facilities. Additional infrastructure investments would solve the financial and technical issues, and getting smart people on the ground would solve the managerial issues. If a large grocery chain decided to invest on the ground, and reduce loss from an average of 35% to 10%, it would effectively increase production by almost 40% and lower the cost per unit by almost 30%. (Production levels go from 65% to 90%. 40% of 90% is 36%. 30% of 90% is 27%.) This is not a hard problem to solve. And it wouldn’t take too long before the grocery chain saw ROI.

In developed countries, more than than 40% of losses happen at retail and consumer levels. Faster transport, better storage, and better inventory planning could have a big impact at the retail level. The only thing a Procurement Pro can’t really control is consumer waste.

So think about what changes you can make in your organization to minimize food waste and encourage investments on the ground in the regions, and on the farms, you depend on. And when costs go down, your organization will have something to be thankful for too!

Reuse, Recycle, Remanufacture – Call It What You Want, But Just Do It!

Sourcing Innovation has been promoting sustainability since the beginning and design for recycle since the very early days, which is essentially what you are doing if you are designing for remanufacturing, which is finally starting to take hold in parts of the industrial sector, as per this recent article over on ThomasNet from the green & clean on “a solution that makes both economic and environmental sense”.

When you think about the average complexity of today’s consumer products, especially in electronics, it becomes clear that when a product breaks, it is typically only one component that is broken and a replacement of that component makes the product useable again. That’s why a lot of computer, tablet, and phone manufacturers have entered the refurbishment business – once the damaged or defective part in a product that was returned under warranty or reclaimed upon disposal by a customer, it can be reused and, more importantly, resold.

But the concept doesn’t end with electronics, and doesn’t end with refurbishment. Electronics can be designed more modularly with re-manufacture in mind, so that parts can be upgraded en-masse when the products are returned en-masse in a regular upgrade cycle. For example, if laptops were designed for easy replacement of not only memory and drives, but processors and peripheral connectors (in anticipation of USB 4, Thunderbolt 2, etc.), the previous generation models could become the next generation models and resold as either lower-end offerings in the same market or new offerings in a foreign, emerging market.

And automotive suppliers, who not only know that parts wear out, but when parts are likely to wear out, and which parts wear out together, could not only design their engines to make it easy to replace parts, such as spark plugs, batteries, belts, filters, and pumps that wear out quickly, but also the engine block as a whole, that is going to wear out in 7 to 15 years, depending on the average annual mileage. Given the choice, many people on a fixed income (who don’t live by the ocean and have rust to worry about) would rather replace the engine for 3,000 to 5,000 and keep the car for another 7-10 years if the frame is fine than pay 25,000 or 30,000 for a new car. And while this may not look as attractive from a bottom line perspective to a manufacturer, it significantly reduces the chance of the customer migrating to a different car company, which is very common if a competitor is offering a significantly better deal on a comparable car.

Plus, if the components are themselves designed for remanufacturing, it will be relatively easy for the manufacturer to reclaim the raw materials from the damaged or defective components, which is where a lot of the cost comes in, especially if we are talking rare earth metals. For example, the price of praseodymium-neodymium oxide exceed 1.25 an ounce and prices of terbium oxide (a semi-conductor that is used as an activator for green phospors in colour TV tubes) exceeded 12.00 an ounce this summer, and that’s cheap. Gold, a metal used in many electronics products, exceeded $1400 an ounce. And while there is not much gold in a single laptop, when you put fifty of them together, you’d likely get an ounce. And given that there are roughly 100 Million PC laptops and computers sold a year, that’s close to 2 Million ounces of gold that need to be reclaimed!

And, as per the green & clean article, remanufactured products offer cost savings in the 45% to 60% range! So if doing the right thing isn’t enough, that should be enough of a justification to invest in remanufacturing! This goes double if you are in electronics (for some of the reasons given above) or automotive, where the global market for remanufactured auto parts is projected to reach $122.8 Billion by 2018.

So, regardless of what you want to call it, it’s time to do it. It’s not just good environmental stewardship, it’s good economics.

While You Were on Summer Vacation, Vendor Posts, Part I

While you were on summer vacation, SI was powering away with daily posts and continuing to cover some of the leading vendors in the space, presenting a number of deep dives on their respective technology platforms. Here is a short recap of some of the coverage you might have missed!

Ecovadis-Powered E-TASC

In our post on Ecovadis-Powered E-TASC, we reported that Ecovadis is now powering the new, and greatly improved, version of the Electronic Tool for Accountable Supply Chains. Launched by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GESI), the new platform had over 20 ITC companies and over 1000 ICT suppliers registered, subscribed, and deployed within a month and, according to the E-TASC site, now has over 1,400 facilities in the system. By (re)launching on Ecovadis, a buyer has immediate access to deep sustainability, business practice, labour practice, human rights, and environmental assessments in one comprehensive, audited, third party verified report. (More information on Ecovadis can be found in this classic SI post on how they are Ecovating the Globe.)

Nipendo

In our posts on Nipendo, which is Bringing O2P and P2P to the Mainstream and Streamlined Invoice Management for Even the Largest Organization, we noted how Nipendo, a provider of order-to-payment automation software, recently released a new version of its order-to-payment (O2P) platform that includes automated rules-based end-to-end invoice reconciliation — which also supports automatic data normalization, completion, and matching — that allows even the largest Global 3000 to not only reach the point where 98%+ of invoices are processed electronically, but where 90%+ are processed without human intervention. Their largest customer reached this point within two years, and their average customer sees over 80% of invoices being processed electronically within one year due to Nipendo’s multi-faceted supplier onboarding process. Realizing that the necessary data is going to come from a variety of systems, Nipendo integrates with all the major ERP vendors, a large number of third party supply management platforms, and provides suppliers with a number of options to submit invoices, including a web-portal and a print-to-cloud solution that allows a supplier to install a plug-in that will allow them to print their invoice from their billing system directly into the Nipendo platform.

Fieldglass

In our post about Fieldglass, and how they are adapting to every contingency (Part I, Part II, and Part III), we noted how Fieldglass has been hard at work evolving their platform since SI last covered them in 2010 and, in addition to improving its rate guidance and extending its rate structure capability, has streamlined its job posting capability, implemented e-mail approvals, developed an “Ask- An-Expert” recommendation engine, built a powerful timesheet manager, and added extensive Statement of Work Support. The rate structure capability is one of the hidden gems of the platform. With deployments in over 80 countries, Fieldglass has a deep insight into the many varied, complex, and strange rate structures around the world that can include per diems, special bonuses, hazard and isolation pay, vacation pay, etc., with each component separately (not) taxable by multiple state (and federal) agencies – and has built a platform with enough flexibility and configurability to handle it all. Another hidden gem is e-mail approvals. While very simple in theory, and relatively simple in implementation, this simple functionality reduced the cycle time to fill a position by 66% in the customers that implemented it! And the timesheet and Statement of Work modules are just cool.

Come back tomorrow and we’ll tell you about three more recently covered companies you might have missed!