RDIN’s new warehousing strategy – quality and timely access to tests

Faced with major disruptions to their supply chain over the past few years, Roche Diagnostics India decided to remodel its warehousing strategy. The new warehouse model enhances operational efficiency due to the consolidation of facilities at four rather than the previous eight locations, uses benefits GST has brought to the logistics industry and has resulted in the ease of product movement. This ensures that RDIN’s tests are accessible to customers in time, quality standards are adhered to and policy requirements of the future are already planned for. Dr Shravan Subramanyam, Managing Director, India and Neighbouring Markets at Roche Diagnostics India gives more details

Roche Diagnostics India’s warehousing strategy ensures that our tests are accessible to customers in time, quality standards are adhered to and policy requirements of the future are already planned for. At the foundation of all these objectives was the need for business continuity considering the flood situation in Chennai and the fire in one of our North warehouses – details of which are below.

Today, RDIN has four state-of-the-art warehouses across India – Dharuhera (Haryana), Bhiwandi (Maharashtra), Kolkata and the most recently launched Chennai facility. This is against the eight warehouses that we had as of last year. The remodelling of RDIN’s warehousing strategy factors in the ease of product movement and other benefits GST has brought to the logistics industry. The new warehouse model enhances operational efficiency considerably due to the consolidation of the facilities under 4 locations.

We have renowned and reliable logistics partners for the running of our warehouses – DHL manages our Chennai warehouse, while the other three are managed by Parekh Integrated Services.

At the end of 2016, the Chennai floods resulted in major losses to property. The RDIN warehouse in Madhavaram was badly affected too. There was no connectivity or electricity for more than a week. Again, in 2017 we faced a major fire incident in our Okhla-based Delhi warehouse. All our instruments, reagents and spares were gutted in that fire. In spite of these incidents, we ensured business continuity with minimum disruptions. With our BCP (Business Continuity Plan) in place, we resumed operations within four days in Delhi. Even during floods, we were able to salvage all our products and their integrity because of advance preparedness. However, these two incidents forced us to relook into our safety standards and our overall warehouse management system.

As an immediate step, we moved our Delhi warehouse to a newly built state-of-the-art warehouse in Dharuhera (Haryana) which is fully equipped with all modern facilities for safety and quality managements. Currently, the focus in the Haryana warehouse is to avoid any future incidence. The next in line was Chennai.

With the knowledge and expertise of Roche’s Safety, Health and Environment (SHE), quality, IT and operations teams, today, the award-winning Chennai warehouse in Sholavaram is a sprawling 60,000 sqft facility with a clear height of more than 30 ft. The new warehouse at Chennai is fully compliant with International Standards of Safety & Protection. We have followed NFPA (National Fire Protection Association), which are Global Guidelines, much stringent than National Building Code. Environmental sustainable practices like energy conservation, containment pit, environment friendly waste management is also in place. It’s a 100 per cent temperature controlled warehouse with a storage facility 24X7 monitoring of storage temperature and humidity levels. We also have tools for descriptive, predictive and real time analytics. We have a fully integrated WMS (Warehouse Management System) which helps us in improving operational efficiencies, JIT (Just- In-Time) inventory, robust tracking mechanism, inbound and outbound optimisation and reconciliation mechanism. We also get benefits like efficient manpower management and improvised customer relationship management.

NS Venkatesha, Head – Commercial Operations, Roche Diagnostics India says, “We are confident that Roche Diagnostics India’s warehousing capabilities have now grown several notches over the past years. While we can proudly share that our warehouses are accredited with: ISO9001, ISO13485 & ISO 45001, it is our endeavour to develop our facilities as a benchmark for warehousing excellence. This gains all the more significance in the light of people we are serving – it is important for customers to have our products on time and in quality, for them to be able to meet patient needs. In as far as quality and operations standards are concerned, Roche Diagnostics India warehouses are certified by third party auditors SGS, who’ve awarded us the Platinum Certificate.”

Recently, Roche Diagnostics India won the ‘Supply Chain Excellence Award 2019’ in India for best warehousing management by the Indian Institute of Materials Management at NATCOM 2019.