Continental India
“An agile and flexible supply chain is key in order to achieve top performance in the tyre manufacturing business. The requirements from our customers are more diverse these days, they have many options on the market, but they expect best quality, top performing products, on time delivery and value for money from a premium brand like Continental,” opines Devgun.
The Continental Tyres Modipuram plant, being part of a multinational corporation, operates according to globally implemented internal standards in supply chain. Devgun believes that their key success indicator in 2016 was their flexibility and speed of reacting to the changing market demand. Ensuring proximity to the customer and predicting the changing needs of the customer well in advance helped to keep the stock turns, and in turn cash flow situation, under control.
“Complexity in supply chain systems can be taken care of with integration of IT systems to make the entire chain more transparent and precise,” believes Devgun. They face one challenge though: manufacturing tyres means a higher number of articles and products, and hence a higher range of complexity. In response, the plant has introduced gradually higher digitalisation in their manufacturing technology, and also uses the Continental Business System, which is focused on increasing efficiency, while ensuring that all supply chain operations are according to the company’s internal global standard.
