Meet Avinash, Switching Up a Gear In Supply Chain
With India being one of the fastest growing beauty markets in the world, topped with the unprecedented changes in consumers habits in the digital age, being a leader steering the wheels of L’Oréal India’s Supply Chain is far from an easy task! But someone taking it all in his stride is Avinash, Supply Chain Head (Consumer Products Division). In a country that produces over 250 million beauty products a year and has 14 distribution centers across a country of over 3 million km2, topped with a booming e-commerce market shaking the system all up, how do we stay agile? Let Avinash share his career at L’Oréal so far and give us the lowdown on Supply Chain challenges, goals, and successes. Oh, and not to mention his awesome team making sure we’re right on track!
Avinash, tell us something about yourself we can’t tell from your CV!
I’m an avid traveler! I love to travel across India with my wife to offbeat places. Although I’m very fearful of heights, I always seem to find myself doing something where I come back and think, “what have I done”? like crossing makeshift bridges, or going on uncharted trails. I guess I’m a risk taker and thrill seeker!
Tell us about your path to joining L’Oréal!
I’m a mechanical engineer by profession and when I completed my engineering masters, I went straight into working in the automobile industry in India. From there, I went to do my post-grad in Singapore, which leads me to a job in Dubai in Supply Chain in the personal care industry, This is where I was first approached by L’Oréal. The next thing I know, I had joined the world’s biggest beauty company in one of the regional offices and then to the Head Office in Mumbai a year later. I’ve been in different roles at L’Oréal Operations, such as Planning, Projects, Customer Service and eventually as Supply Chain Manager.
What does your role as Supply Chain Supply Manager involve?
Supply Chain is a part of the Operations team and divided into three key functions. One is planning, so my team and I manage the entire planning function, from what we procure, how and where we procure from, and the services needed for different customers. We also create the forecasting strategy for the coming 12 months, working very closely with internal stakeholders, such as the marketing, commercial, product development teams, and with factory colleagues.
The second aspect is about how we deliver these products to the customers and assuring they are easily accessible. There are different models of doing this and many questions we have to ask ourselves. What kind of inventory do we want to keep at a certain warehouse? How do we determine the frequency of delivering products?
Then we have the separate third function called physical distribution that takes care of warehousing and physical movement of goods between factory and warehouses and to the customers. All is in the aim of creating the smoothest possible system from production to end consumer.
How is digitalization affecting the L’Oréal India Supply Chain?
Before the consumer’s digital touchpoint with our products, off and online, digitalization starts at the supply chain with customer interactions. Our customers include distributors or e-commerce partners. In terms of the first point of contact with the customers today, expectations are changing. Let’s take Amazon for example- when consumers order something on Amazon, they always know when it`s going to be delivered and can track on your mobile. That’s the expectation that our distributor or e-commerce partners have now. Our goal here is to build a system that tracks all the information so it can seamlessly flow through value chain nodes.
Another big thing we are working on is to have a road map on end-to-end integration. For example, at a point of sale, when a product is sold, how does this information flow seamlessly between different nodes of the value chain, back to production and for the production to then be triggered again with the minimum amount of lag?
Are all products created in India created for Indian consumers only?
About 90% of our products are produced locally. We also import makeup, from other countries, namely the US, Europe and China. We also produce products locally for a couple of other ASEAN countries; Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, New Zealand and Australia. It’s also interesting to know that a lot of our hair care and color products for the ASEAN are formulated by our Research and Innovation labs here in India.
How has growing consumer demands such as e-commerce changed Supply Chain management?
It changes everything! E-commerce is a channel which has brought a lot of volatility in the way we drive our Supply Chain, as expectations from a customer change greatly. Traditionally, customers were okay to have their ordered goods delivered in a flexible timeframe. Today, e-commerce customers such as Amazon have very strong expectations-we have to be able to deliver at the desired 30 minute time frame. In Supply Chain, it means that our whole value chain, the transport and all stakeholders have to be geared up to deliver these demands. Then, just because of the sheer size of our customers, there is a lot of automation that happens on their end, which demands great levels of automation from our end too.
E-commerce also brings a lot of volatility in terms of the demand patterns. For instance, an e-commerce site runs a promotion on lipstick and you find yourself out of stock for a couple of days. And then everyone is running around to make sure you fill it right again. So a lot of work goes into addressing this volatility in our demand patterns.
E-commerce also brings in new dimensions to how we package your products. On e-commerce, our products are handled almost 20 times more than our traditional channel. Our Supply Chain has to be geared up to handle big volumes bought on e-commerce, whilst always considering our carbon footprint and sustainable actions.
And last but not least, are financial concerns. We need different and innovative ways to drive our Supply Chain to cater to these ecommerce channels without compromising on services and keeping down costs.
How does sustainability play a role in Supply Chain management?
Supply Chain plays a huge role in the Group’s sustainability efforts. One priority is reducing carbon emissions. Our target is to reduce the carbon emission from production and distribution by almost 60% from 2005 to 2020. In terms of transportation, we have reduced our emissions by 20% in 2011. We have very stringent rules around actions that are necessary concerning transportation in order to meet these targets.
In terms of sustainable production, we choose our suppliers strategically, as well as develop them to be more compliant with environmental concerns. And the last element concerns landfill waste where we have achieved zero waste to landfill.
What is the biggest Supply Chain challenge you are tackling right now?
One of the biggest challenges that we face comes from e-commerce as previously discussed, because it’s growing really fast, and is extremely demanding in terms of services, reactivity.
On a day to day level, and I’m sure I speak for every Supply Chainer out there, is to have time in the working day to work on building a long-term strategy and developing your team, rather than ‘firefighting’. In Operations, we are always on our toes ready to react- and it could be as simple as a scenario where a truck reaches a certain location late due to traffic bad and the whole firefighting actions start!
Tell us about your team!
In Supply Chain in India, we have a team of 40+people. This is a small team for a big country! We’re a very dynamic team with many young talented individuals. I’d say I’m very lucky to work in such an environment.
I have 17 people in my immediate team, and the best thing is that we know each other very well on a one to one basis. One of my achievements in these years in L’Oréal has been finding time with each team member to help develop them That’s also come from the fact that I`ve got great mentors here, who have passed on the ability to coach and to mentor. In my team, I manage a very varied bunch, some who are straight out of college, and some very senior. Engaging and developing someone who is senior to you is different to someone who is extremely young. The younger ones are particularly demanding! It’s a real challenge but at the same time, it gives you a sense of achievement when you are doing things right. I’m really lucky that this is made easier thanks to the pure passion that people have for what they do. Driven teams have never been a big challenge- once the vision is set, people can move quickly towards it collectively.
What is your advice for someone looking to join your team?
Well, when you think of someone in the supply chain, you’d probably think of a guy behind a laptop, data crunching, calling transport firms etcetera, and that’s part of the job yes. However, what is also key is knowledge about our products and consumers. I’m super happy my team confidently know as much about products and customers as anyone in the commercial and marketing teams would. It all comes down to passion- I really advise anyone who wants to join our Supply Chain team to have a lot of passion in what they do. The other advice I’d give is to be non-conventional. We live in a time of major shifts, and sticking to the conventional mindsets and methods don’t work anymore. Channel shifts and Digitalization changes everything, our systems, customer interactions, the information we need and more. So be unconventional, be you!
Like Avinash says, the Supply Chain team is only going to get bigger and bigger. Are you inspired to be part of it? Check out our careers at L’Oréal India to see what could be in store for you:
