In an surge in cold storage requirement by pharma businesses because of Covid-19 to elastic warehousing quickly being embraced by organizations to scale down or up fast, Vivek Juneja, creator and MD at homegrown logistics and warehousing important, Varuna Group is currently in the middle of everything.
Presently serving since CII committee member of irrigation and warehousing industry, Juneja speaks to TOI concerning the challenges and opportunities that the pandemic has thrown around to the industry.
Excerpts: What are the current challenges in the logistics area because of Covid-19? Currently, important challenges are posed with the uncertainty surrounding the outbreak as well as the shortage of labor availability.
We’re trying to keep the equilibrium between our core values of operational excellence whilst ensuring optimal security and safety measures for our employees and clients.
Apart from these, there’s, so far, been a deficiency of large-scale technological advancement, but that has shifted over the previous year because the start of the pandemic with all tech-led features like contactless deliveries being released.
What are businesses doing to overcome those challenges? What changes they made to confront these challenges at the future?Technological adoption is the significant step that’s been accepted to overcome these struggles.
Introducing contactless logistics has been among those landmarks for the logistics sector as it helped streamline operations and maximize time, price, and labour that normally enters the day-to-day surgeries.
We’re actively inviting people to get educated to make sure their safety in this emergency.
In the very long term, these steps will be essential in helping us conquer challenges, and also with the assistance of future-ready technology, the sector is going to be ready for any upcoming catastrophe of similar character.
Are there some long-term modifications in the standard logistics version which you foresee?Previously, essential elements of logistics like lorry receipts and evidence of shipping were bodily documents but now using the digitization of surgeries, particularly due to the Covic-19 outbreak, all of these are done and saved digitally.
This is only one of the most crucial changes that we’ve observed in the business.
Additional there’s enhanced flexibility and scalability from the area, which makes finishing operations more effective.
What chances do you see?As much as opportunities are concerned, the single real one is there is a lot of scope to re create the whole operations in areas like strategic and operational decision making, routing, fleet optimisation, data evaluation, and tactical planning whilst updating legacy systems.
In addition, decreasing dependability on function with working and automation on scalability are also some areas in which there is scope for progress.
What changes are occurring in warehousing? Are there some new requirements from customers? At present, elastic warehousing is gaining fast grip as everybody prefers it.
Adaptive warehousing enables you to scale down or up according to the seasonal marketplace needs and can be a cost-optimized version.
We hope this trend will have more grip in the near future.
Sales of ice cream and soft drinks have dipped.
Has this changed the cold storage capacity of logistics companies?We do not offer cold storage centers for delicate drink/ice cream manufacturers, however, we do supply them for pharma businesses.
Since the beginning of the outbreak, the cold storage requirement from pharma firms has grown.
Additionally, adjustable cold storage aids fulfill requirements satisfactorily with no excess/wastage or lack of space or items.