Name: Title:

Deepanshu Srivastava (2007 2009) A critical analysis of supply chain management with focus on Paint Industry An analytical view of the Sales and Marketing side (Case Study: Asian Paints India Ltd. and Berger Paints India Ltd.)

Summary
Supply Chain Management is an area that is used as a differentiating factor for a lot of companies. Every company in the world has either improved the Supply Chain Management or is looking forward to give proper concentration to it. This project will take a look at the supply chain management of the Paint Industry. In view of the same the companies which are been covered are primarily the biggest 2 companies in Delhi. As being No.1 in Delhi, Berger Paints India Ltd and the follower Asian Paints India Ltd. The study has only been focused towards the working of these companies in the global region of Delhi. The research has mainly covered some company officials; in the company officials even I have tried to cover at least 3 levels of officials, thus for the same effort I have covered 10 sales officers of 3 companies (Berger Paints, Asian Paints and Nerolac paints also for a better idea of the industry), then onwards there are ASMs of all the three companies and RSMs of only the two focal companies. After covering the company persons, the next step was to cover, as many dealers as I can, but due to the time constrain the no of dealers, which were been covered, were restricted to only 25. With the discussions to the company persons and the dealers I was able to gain knowledge that the paint trade in Delhi is primarily working on 2 things. One is rebates and the other is credit period. On the basis of both the things the market runs. In the thesis I have first explained about the basic concept of supply chain management. After the same I have explained about the Indian Paint Industry. Paint trade in India is organised only to the level of 60% and rest is all un-organised. The unorganized sector in the Paint Industry is very scattered; Delhi in all has almost 550 Local vendors. Thus the competition and usefulness of SCM goes deeper. After understanding the need then the thesis moves to various areas of the SCM and see how are all these things managed in Paint Industry as a whole and wherever possible about the two companies differently.

Objectives
The objective here is to get an overview of Supply Chain Management and to know how this concept works in the Paints Industry. The various steps the companies take to improve the supply chain management and how successful are they.  To study the various areas of Supply Chain Management in Paint Industry.  To study Supply Chain Management of Asian Paints and Berger Paints.  To conduct a comparative analysis between Asian Paints and Berger Paints.  To find out gaps left while implementing Supply Chain Management in companies under the paint industry.  To suggest the areas of improvement.

Findings
Findings from company employees: The information through the questionnaire from the company employees are as follows The supply chain in Asian paints and Berger Paints are managing the supply chain with Close partnership with supplier, JIT supply, e-procurement, EID, many suppliers.  Companies are managing the supply chain in general is very successful.  Companies need to do in order to manage its supply chain better are JIT, EDI, eprocurement, outsourcing and plan strategically. So that they can do better in the field of product and vendor management. Also as they have many suppliers so it is helpful to them.  Yes, the companies have different warehouse for products.  Yes, the companies have clear logistic plan.  ERP, SCM, JIT, E-Commerce are the systems which are currently in use, in your company to support Supply Chain Management.  Using Better quality of information and better quantity of information benefited greatly to the organisation flexibility reduced lead-time in production it also helpful in cost saving and forecasting and resource planning ,better operational efficiency, reduced inventory level which is also helpful to increasing the sale  The company do not having a much problem with using these systems somewhere they have very less problem.

Findings from vendors and dealers: I met some vendors and distributors of the company, the information through the questionnaire I get, were as follows:  The vendors and the distributors were happy with the company, because maximum time the company delivered the product on time. Some of the vendors are not somehow happy with the product delivery.  The product quality of Asian Paints is good than the Berger Paints as the shopkeepers told us but they are happy with these two brands performance in the market.  Yes, every distributor and shopkeeper wants more product portfolio so that they can fulfill the customer demand and their needs about the paint.  Every shopkeeper has multi brand store but they have both of them (Asian Paints and Berger Paints) because these are market leaders and their demand is high in the market  Many of the shopkeepers using Tinting Machine, because they told that this is very useful to mix the paint and make new color paint.  Distributors told that vendor management of the company is good; they provide the product at time.  Some of them have the different storage for different products.

Conclusion
The supply chain is very important aspect of the business, basically when you are in the manufacturing industry. The demand of paint is very high in the market because of customer choice become broad and they give more priority to the decorative paints and also the real estate is booming sector. So providing the right product at right time to the right person is very important in today scenario, as these two companies are doing well for their supply chain management to be good for the market so that they dont have any problem in future in inventory management and logistic management. The supply chain system includes supply chain process management or event management capabilities. These capabilities will enable close to real time, event based escalation of relevant pieces of information through the organization to appropriate individuals, Resulting strategies, potentially system-recommended, could involve the following options: confirmation of the event with

the supplier, an examination of the possibility of replacing the material, or an assessment of the impact on downstream value chain coupled with an evaluation of alternate suppliers. As in one of the previous chapters we have seen that the controlling of such a huge bunch of products is very difficult and is not possible to attain a optimal formula to get all the products at the right time, at the right place and also at the right price, which is one of the key areas on which the paint company works. Real-time visibility of the supply chain, combined with a monitoring and an event-management system, will increase the proportion of decisions that are taken preemptively to minimize unintended consequences or exploit unforeseen situations. Increasingly, key decisions will be made by crossfunctional teams, chosen explicitly with the right skill set mix, and sometimes assembled just for the purpose of solving the problem at hand. The demands for supply chain efficiency will emphasize a combination of both centralized and decentralized structures and approachescollaborative and centralized planning with decentralized executionrequiring real time visibility for monitoring and rapid response mechanisms for eventdriven management involving close to real-time problem escalation and remediation. Effective management of supply chains will occur through the deployment of integrated organizational team structures at multiple levelsexecutive through senior and middle managementexecuted through physical and/or virtual facilities such as war rooms. The first area where the industry has to move is that they have to make the customer involved in the process of purchasing the products; in fact the industry should try and make paint as a product that should be a part of a persons life. This should be done as a person is spending most of the time in a day in his office or at his home and he is only able to see the colors of the walls. This has also been proved scientifically also that the colors that are surrounding us have a major effect. By doing the above they will first be able to create demand in the market, which will finally force the dealers to stock the product in the market. This will improve the reach of a company in the market and will create presence in the market.

By creating the presence in the market a company can create fast turnover of the product. i.e. the product will quickly get cleared from the dealers counter which will finally help the company to quicken the whole process and this will lead to an effective supply chain management. A company if have the fast moving of the products from the counter can even plan things in a better manger as on the forecasting front. This company can very well forecast that what the market will be demanding in this particular period. The existing system of paint industry, which mainly runs on the rebates base, will also not affect the player; this is because of the market demand that is been created in the mind of a customer. For getting best results of the promotions a company also needs to educate the customer as to how to use the products. This is needed because of the painter involvement in the final output of the product. If a painter works well on the paint then only the paint will give the best result. As also been discussed earlier that if a painter uses 3rd grade paint in a proper manner and a 1st grade paint in not a proper manner then he will be able to get a better result from the 3rd grade paint. This is the reason that a company needs to educate the customer also so that the customer will be well equipped to supervise the whole process and will be able to notice about the mistakes made by the painter. In addition to educating the customer a company also needs to educate the painters in a better manner, a big initiative is to be taken as to make a better class of painters in the country. This is needed as that by improving the whole class of painters one is improving the whole paint industry. Painters are the first point of interaction for the paint industry, even to many they are the only level of interaction for getting the work done. To improve this some of the companies have taken the initiative as by introducing Home Dcor by Berger Paints and Home Solutions by Asian Paints. These two services that are been provided by these the companies, provides all the painting services to the customer. This service starts from giving quotation to the customer to shifting the stuff back to the places where it was before the painting work started. This all will be take n care by a well-educated executive of the company. By providing all these services companies are trying to improve the customer satisfaction by getting the products from a company. This is one of the most important focuses of the supply chain management.

Suggestions
 Both of the companies are doing well, they both have their own supply chain management and logistic management but somehow they are lacking because of many unorganized companies, who are sharing their market.  They have to go through JIT so that they can find the raw material at time and use it for manufacturing the paint.  They have also to provide raw material of product to the distributors so that they can make the paint of the color demanded by the customer at the same time by tinting machine.  They have to go through RFID so that they can track the consignment, and demand will verified easily and fast.  They can also improvise their e-procurement to do better in the field of supply chain management.  They have to provide more and more tinting machine to the dealers so that they can do better and provide color demanded by the customer. The above article was extracted from dissertations by the students of Skyline College. Skyline College is amongst the top MBA and BBA institutes in Delhi, Gurgaon (NCR)