The Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur was glad to host Mr. Srinivas Iyer, Associate Director, Supply Chain, Abbott Nutrition (India) on 26th October 2017 under its flagship guest lecture series – ‘Vaarta’.
A distinguished corporate leader, Mr. Iyer has over two decades of experience in handling several demanding positions at companies like CEAT, Beckman Coulter, and Thermo Fisher Scientific. He has extensively worked in critical areas such as Inventory Management, Supply Chain Management, New Product Launches, Procurement, and Project Planning and Strategy. Through an extremely insightful guest lecture, Mr. Iyer edified the students on ‘Living Life to the Fullest’, the ‘College-to-corporate Transition’, and ‘Supply Chain Management’ – his area of expertise.
At the very outset, the audience was prompted to note how vital work-life balance and good nutrition are for the health and well-being of an individual. In the same breath, he spoke about the importance of maintaining hygiene and sanitation in plants. Mr. Iyer also illustrated how Abbott uses modern medical science to enable people to “live life to the fullest”. Catering to the entire Indian sub-continent, Abbott’s sophisticated and large-scale supply chain in India exemplifies sheer efficiency. Mr. Iyer gave the students a glimpse of this supply chain network and highlighted the various trade channels, partners, and collaborations involved in making it tick.
Students progressing into the corporate world are often overwhelmed by the perceivable differences between the two. Mr. Iyer elaborated how the different transitions from “ the individual to the team”, “mark sheets to balance sheets”, “exam time drill to daily workload”, and “individual to leadership”, test one’s skills in the real “corporate battlefield”. He urged the b-school students in the audience to always bear in mind the inclination of people in the corporate world towards numbers and bottom lines more than anything else and this entails a strong focus on quantification and delivery to succeed at work.
The pinnacle of the session was the mock exercise conducted by Mr. Iyer that was tuned to achieve cost reduction through Inventory Management. Through this exercise, he clearly demonstrated two very indispensable points. One of which was the role that strong connections play in convincing people to buy one’s ideas. The second was the strong emphasis on end results and deliveries that are the undoubted realities of the corporate world. Mr. Iyer stressed upon the fact that the essence of building a robust and resilient supply chain lay in forging strong and lasting collaborations with the stakeholders such as suppliers, vendors, and other partners.
The lecture made allusions to several key concepts underlining the success of supply chain networks, such as – ‘Cold Chain Management’, ‘Lean Delivery’, ‘Just-in-Time’, and ‘Drop Ship Method’. The audience was also made cognizant of the general challenges faced by the healthcare industry and prevalent issues such as counterfeiting of drugs. These ideas resonated in the minds of the students long after the engaging guest lecture by Mr. Srinivas Iyer came to an end. As budding managers perpetually looking forward to gaining deeper knowledge about the industry, we hope to hear more from leaders like Mr. Iyer in the days and years to come.