Ensuring manufacturing continuity during the pandemic. Together.

‘Make it better together’ is a guiding tenet for how we operate each day. Yet, as it often does during a crisis, a truly collaborative effort during the present pandemic involving all our supply partners, airline & shipping companies, freight forwarders, transporters and our own cross-functional teams, has emphatically reinforced this belief. It has allowed us to keep our supply chain intact ensuring that our manufacturing operations continued with zero downtime and enabled us to uphold our commitments to our customers.

Proactive risk identification
Anticipating the supply chain risk well before COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, we conducted a survey covering all our partners, especially in the affected countries, to assess the risk and get a granular understanding of the extent of supply impact across various projects. This timely and detailed information helped our supply chain team develop various strategies to mitigate or minimize the impact.

Translating plans to actions
For an intense period of close to ten weeks, all our cross-functional teams and external partners sustained a 24 x 7 operating model spanning various time zones and implementing solutions in real-time. The team shifted all pending orders in highly affected zones to partners located in medium and low impact zones, by leveraging the strong relationships built over time. We also increased the share of supplies from partners located in less impacted regions. Once the materials were ready, their movement posed a considerable challenge. The team had to reroute several shipments adopting complex logistics solutions involving multi-mode, multi-continent and multi 3PL operators. We used all functional entry gateways, both airports and seaports, which were functional for both inbound and outbound shipments.

Gratifying outcome of collaborative effort
The team handled a total of 294 shipments from the start of lockdown, honouring the delivery commitment to the customers with OTIF > 97% while ensuring zero downtime in the manufacturing activity. Most importantly, the entire effort demonstrated the strength and resilience of our relationships, and an unwavering zeal to make it better together.