The Operations
Desk
Writing at the intersection of supply chain intelligence, production systems, and data-driven strategy. Perspectives grounded in field experience and analytical rigour — not theoretical abstractions.
Digital twins are rapidly shifting from competitive differentiator to operational necessity. As India's manufacturing sector targets a 25% GDP contribution under Make in India 2.0, the gap between organisations that have adopted real-time simulation and those that haven't is becoming a structural risk — not merely a technology gap. This piece examines what digital twin adoption means for production planning, OEE management, and supply chain resilience on the Indian shop floor.
The supply chain disruptions of 2020–2023 exposed a fundamental fragility in how most organisations manage inventory: they respond to disruption rather than anticipate it. Three years on, companies that have transitioned from reactive safety-stock models to predictive, data-driven inventory intelligence are reporting measurably higher service levels at lower carrying costs. This piece examines the frameworks, tools, and organisational shifts required to make that transition — with relevance to India's FMCG, automotive, and specialty manufacturing sectors.
The partial détente in US–China trade tensions has reshuffled the global sourcing deck — again. After years of "China+1" strategies accelerating investment into India, Southeast Asia, and Mexico, the emerging tariff architecture of 2025–26 is forcing procurement leaders to rethink their diversification calculus once more. This piece examines what the latest bilateral developments mean for Indian exporters across electronics, pharma, and specialty manufacturing — and how operations leaders should be stress-testing their supplier networks right now.
The first wave of AI in operations was about automation — eliminating repetitive tasks, accelerating data processing, and surfacing dashboards faster. The second wave is different. Agentic AI systems — capable of planning, tool use, and multi-step reasoning without continuous human prompting — are beginning to take on work that was previously considered judgment-heavy: demand sensing, supplier risk scoring, and exception management. For operations professionals, the question is no longer "will AI touch my role?" but "how do I build alongside it?"