Can Vehicle Planning Software work in India?

Let us take an example of a trucking company with say 1000 vehicles with GPS mounted on all of them.

The company has also integrated a system like WebXpress with GPS. So the trucking company knows exactly where all vehicles are, where are they going and when will they reach destination(more or less, with a buffer of a few hours).

A trucker can invest in a planning tool to optimize his loading and reduce his idle time. If trucker can match all future demands with likely date of arrival of vehicles with a buffer time- he can commit capacity to these customers.

Seems basic. Does not work on ground.

Here is why:

GPS and system can tell when vehicle will reach customer point, but NO ONE can predict when vehicle will be FREED by customer. This will totally depend on stock situation at customer location, his production plan, other vehicles in queue and so on.

As the time when vehicle will be free is not known, NEXT customer can be committed a vehicle only after this vehicle is actually free. If committed in anticipation (as done in most cases today), you have the usual complaints of "Saab, Gaadi bus nikal gaya hai, thode samay mein aa jayega!!"

Given this uncertainty, the NEXT customer orders vehicle much in advance or from multiple players.

When you run this scene across customers, you have a totally unpredictable situation solved day to day on phone calls. This is why TRAFFIC DEPARTMENT- where people have 4 ears and 8 phones- is the most crucial for most truckers.

Can Planning Tools make a difference in such a scenario?

 

Supply Chain in Emerging Market Vs. Developed Nation

Emerging markets like India are often chided for their poor and unreliable supply chains. A much cited number- India spends13% of GDP on Logistics compared to 8-9% in Developed world. We are supposed to be wasting 30% of agri produce due to non-availability of cold chains etc.

But are our supply chain really that bad? Do we need our supply chain to be working the way it works in- say Germany?

Take example of cold chains- if all the food consumed by Indians were to move through cold chain- what will be additional diesel required with its impact on fuel subsidy bill?

Cold Chain vehicles consumes 5 times more fuel than a normal vehicle. Thus, if all vegetables moving from Nashik were to travel in temperature controlled vehicles- imagine the jump in fuel required.

This does not mean we do not need cold chains or reduce wastage. But we can not apply models of developed economy on emerging markets in an as is mode.