Hindustan Unilever (HUL), the country’s largest consumer goods company, runs a network of 28 factories and 35 warehouses, producing over 75 billion units across 2,000+ products annually. This large operation is fuelled by advanced automation, digital analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure minimal disruptions to the production process. Yogesh Mishra, executive director, supply chain at HUL, talks to Viveat Susan Pinto about the focus on digital fulfilment centres and utilisation of nano factories to produce in small batches and how Project Nakshatra is aiding agility. Excerpts:
HUL has often said that what is good for India is good for the company. How does this play out in your supply chain operations?
We have a collaborative and customer-centric approach to supply chain management. We have a multi-category multi-format distributed network comprising 28 own factories and over 50 collaborative manufacturing units producing more than 75 billion units annually. We also strive to be gender-inclusive — for instance, one of our factories in Bundelkhand in central India has over 40% women in the workforce. We are looking to take our female workforce numbers up in our other factories too. At the same time, we constantly strive to be innovative and optimise our operations to meet the changing needs of the Indian consumer.
What is Project Nakshatra and how is it helping your supply chain stay nimble?
Project Nakshatra is our multi-year network transformation project which we have undertaken to reset our manufacturing and distribution network. As part of this project, we aim to create factories closer to demand centres and co-locating suppliers and warehouses, so that we can serve our customers faster and at a lower cost. This also helps us drive agility and resilience in our supply chain. With Nakshatra, we aim to reduce lead times and optimise our logistics network effectively. We started Nakshatra with the home and personal care (HPC) portfolio in 2020 and the execution is now complete. This programme has now been expanded to other parts of our portfolio, including foods.
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