A one-day industrial visit at Big Basket Grocery Supplies Pvt. Ltd was organized for BBA - III semester students by IMS Ghaziabad University campus on 25th September 2018. The visit was conducted for 40 students, who were accompanied by two faculty members. The team of IMS was incepted by Mr. Anjani Kumar (Head HR Big Basket Noida). Then the team was introduced to the Inbound Logistics Manager Mr. Sumit.

He (Mr. Sumit) kicked off the visit with explaining the supply chain process of Big Basket which are Docking, Quality Control Stage-I (checking of goods), segregation of goods according to various parameters viz., NH - Non-hazardous, H - hazardous, NC - Non crateable, C - Crateable; followed by next version of categorization i.e., by nature of produce viz., Organic, Private supplies, Local supplies for vendors. They (Big Basket) also segments the goods according to type of goods i.e., FnV (Fruits and Veggies); NV - Non veg products; Products for Cold Storage units viz., Products kept between -5 to 5oC, -10 to -5oC and -30 to 15oC; and Cut FnV. Products were also labelled according to their shelf life Big Basket uses a unique color coding to classify the FIFO system of classification of inventory. They also keep a regular manual check on the quality of these perishable items in the inventory. The KPIs and targets set by the management are also stringent in order to keep up against its competitors. After the goods are sorted and refined they are stacked over pallets. Pallets used by Big Basket were of two types i.e., plastic pallets and wooden pallets. Light weight items are assembled over the plastic pallets whereas the wooden pallets are used for heavy weighed items. They are then stacked in the aisles through lifters.

Once a customer processes an order, the order is received by an app and it gets recorded in the Big Basket system. Then the order list is forwarded to the warehouse employees. The employees with the help of RFID technology identifies the products ordered and keeps them in a basket with proper label containing the location, type of goods by nature, produce, crateabilty and hazard criteria. Then the third round of Quality Control is applied and becoming finally ready for dispatch to customers.

In addition of the above Big Basket manages more than a stock of 17,000 units on a single day and the inventory amount sizes up to 8000 crores. The delivery system is managed in four different time slots viz., S1 - Early morning (7:30 am to 9:30 am); followed by S2 - Day Ops (9:30am to 3:30 pm); S3 - Evening (3:30 to 7:30 pm) and S4 - Night delivery (7:30 to 9:30 pm). Big Basket offer two types of delivery schemes to the customers i.e., Hub Delivery and Express delivery within 90 minutes.

He also shared their (Big Basket's) various kinds of strategies to maintain a health inventory system. They also shared the various strategies related to demand forecasting. They also shared on the requirements for organic produce and disposal of waste materials.

Different guidelines for disposal. Strategies to keep customers happy. Key Performance Indicators to have a tight control on inventory wastage such as rack coding left for odd numbers and right for even numbers; shelf coding G-02-C-1 (G is the Aisle No., 02 is the shelf code; C is column letter and 1 is the odd no); some quality standards like ratio of product undelivered( max. limit 0.02%); fill rate i.e., delivery to customer (average rate is 99.50%), stock update for variance measurement in stock (permissible limit 0.05%) and write off i.e., damaged goods or goods that should be replaced (max. threshold 0.20%). The supply chain process was very efficiently run by managers and staff.

The students and faculty members of IMS Ghaziabad University Campus heartily thanks Mr. Mandeep Singh Rawat (Dean -CRC); Dr. Geeti Sharma (HoD - Management); Dr. Sapna Rakesh (Director - IMSUC) and all other staff for their immense support and coordination. We also expect this kind of endeavors in near future as well.