It is true that every business exists because it caters to an outside reason or need. It is equally true that as the business grows, it shapes up like a behemoth that starts working for itself, as a complex web of interlinked organs. And it is precisely at this point in time that a transformation must happen; the transformation of an organisation from a slow-moving elephant to an army of nimble jaguars. At Jindal Stainless, this inflection point was necessitated by our expansion into all-new territory. The Hisar facility was almost four decades old when work on the newly acquired Jajpur facility began. Eventually, as the new plant started maturing, we realised that the old ways of working were getting too cumbersome. One, the plants were separated by nearly 2,000 km. Two, customer requirements were evolving more rapidly than our supply chain. And three, internal coordination and process management were time guzzlers. There was a dire need to simplify and see the whole supply chain once again, and do it from the lens of the customer. Customer: the old and the new Traditionally, this was how business was conducted, and widely accepted: The customer places an order – order gets lodged into planning – requisite raw materials are assigned – production happens as per order requirement – order is shipped to warehouse – order is dispatched from warehouse to customer. Historically, this process worked just right for the company and its customers. But the new-age customer, accustomed to the speed and convenience ushered in by e-commerce, wanted much more. Hence, as the quest for speed and efficiencies became greater, we identified two major latent customer needs: This process led to bulk delivery at the customer’s doorstep – something that the new age customer didn’t want, as they’d rather have an inventory-light operational model. The new mantra was On-Time, In-Full (OTIF), and in smaller and staggered lots. After all, who wants to stock material on their expensive retail space when the company can do that in their warehouses? The traditional method also meant that orders were processed in a chronological sequence; which frustrated the expectations of customers who wanted vanilla offerings. While the customer could wait for specialised products, they no longer had the patience to stand in queue for standard ones. The solution to these seemingly simple needs was not simple at all. When the team set out to make a plan to achieve these goals, we realised it was like a stack-crashing game of Jenga. We had to overhaul and tweak a series of dependent functions for the end result to be delivered this way. Along with the Vector Consulting Group, who were our partners in this journey initially, we sat together to break down each activity into smaller parts and identify the constraints to the fastest solution. Once identified, these constraints had to be demolished in order to establish a highvelocity supply chain, and an agile operational model. This process – of identifying constraints and breaking them down systematically – is the globally acknowledged management practice of the Theory of Constraints, or the ToC. Started in 2017, the ToC project at Jindal Stainless has turned around the functions of planning, operations, sales, and sourcing into pulsating centres of market sensors.
