OPSESSION Issue 1

Opsession

September Issue

This is the first issue of Opsession, the X-Ops newsletter. The newsletter has been introduced by X-Ops with the intention of covering all the activities and events that took place during the span of a month

Cover Story: Ashwamedh 14

conducted

Industrial visit to apply theory into

practice

Students get enrichment with the Immersion

Course

Xavier Institute of

Management, Bhubaneswar

Volume#1

OPSESSION | Volume 1 | Issue 1 2

Opsession

September’14

IN THIS ISSUE

A lot can happen in a month. Even more so at XIMB. And yet more in X-Ops. Keeping that in mind, we decided to cover all the activities and events that took place during the span of a month, and pen it down. This decision materialized in the form of the newsletter that you now hold in your hands.

X-Ops

X-Ops, the Operations Committee of XIM, Bhubaneswar is one of the oldest committees of XIMB. XOPS aims to increase the awareness, interest, and knowledge of students in Operations Management beyond classroom studies. It educates the students about the vital role of operations management in the industry. It conducts industry tours, paper writing contests, e-discussions, alumni talks, knowledge sharing sessions, workshops, and quizzes to generate students' interest in the area.

The Inception

This aim of X-Ops led to launch a newsletter on monthly basis- one that would cover the entire gamut of events and activities aforementioned conducted by X-Ops, taking place in the XIMB campus over the entire month. It also touches upon various nuances of Operations Management and related fields. Continuing on its mission of reducing the environmental impact of its activities to zero, the X-Ops newsletter would be available in the online, paper-free format. It would be ready to be read by the second week of every month.

We hope this attempt of X-Ops to venture into this domain will receive both suggestions and corrections from its readers, so that we can strengthen our bond with you over an improved newsletter.

Ashwamedh 2014 X-Ops successfully conducted its flagship event, the Business Conclave Ashwamedh’14. Read inside to know about what conclusion the brain storming resulted in.

Page 5

Immersion Course

X-Ops’ attempt to bridge the depth of specialization not covered in the regular B-School curriculum takes shape of the “Immersion Course” for 2nd year students. Read more inside.

Page 3

Foreword to the 1st issue

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he course curriculum at any B-School is highly compact and tries to encapsulate everything under the

sun, in a highly structured programme of two years. So, there is very little scope to offer specialization on any particular topic within this short span. In order to bridge this gap, XIMB offers “Immersion Courses” for the students in their 2nd year to provide meaningful insight on a specific topic covering major areas of studies backed by eminent speakers and ‘Management Gurus’ each year in two sessions during August and November.

This August, while the students of XIMB were still reeling under the marvel of 100 days count down launch of “Xpressions- 2014”, they have managed to further strengthen their academic base like any true MBA student with the skills of multi-tasking. The 1st phase of immersion courses for the batch of 2013-15 were held from 8th to 10th of August.

The Topic: ‘X-Ops’ the operations committee at XIMB had come up with a very exciting and trending topic “Supply Chain Management in E-Commerce Companies” in the Operations Management and Decision Sciences field of study. E-commerce is the buzz word in the present business scenario and its rapid growth has led the ‘market pundits’ to term it as the future of business. Be it the Amazons and E-Bays of the world or the ‘desi’ Flipkarts and SnapDeals, each have painted a success story that one simply cannot ignore. So, studying the supply chain challenges in E-commerce business is highly intriguing and essential for all the budding managers.

The Speaker: For any discussion to be enthralling and interesting it has to be driven by an experienced and efficient speaker. So, the X-Ops team was proud to present Mr. Manish Pandeya, AVP

and Global Head, Omni Channel commerce at HCL Technologies, Bengaluru India as the speaker for this course.

Few highlights of his spectacular career are-

A rich experience of 20 years in

key roles in the IT industry,

14 years of experience in “Digital

E-Commerce” ecosystem with

many leading firms like

Cognizant, Wipro among others

including HCL.

He has worked in various

domains of E-Commerce like

sales and marketing, portfolio

and account management to

name a few.

Noted alumnus of IIM Calcutta.

Needless to say with such an enticing topic and an experienced speaker, the programme covered in a span of 2 days with 6 sessions was a huge success with one of the highest number of registrations for any such course. An endless effort by the student’s body of X-Ops along with the support of the faculty coordinators at XIMB made this course such a huge success. As a takeaway, the students of XIMB Batch of 2013-15 would have gained knowledge that would contribute in paving the way as they get ready to step out from this cocoon into the real world of management.

T

X-Ops conducts Immersion course by [Article Author]

Mr. Manish Pandey, AVP & Global Head Omni Channel commerce at HCL

Technologies

OPSESSION | Volume 1 | Issue 1 4

The Kurl-on industrial site

The XIMB students getting a grip on the

industrial nuances of operations management at Kurl-on

BRIEFLY

X-OPS CONDUCTED INDUSTRIAL VISIT TO THE KURL-ON FACTORY ON 29TH JULY

X-Ops committee organized its first

industry visit of the season for students on 29th July, 2014 at Kurl-on manufacturing facility located in Bhubaneswar.

The Kurl-on plant at Bhubaneswar is the only plant serving the complete Eastern and North eastern region of India. The plant is an end-to-end manufacturing facility. The plant produces around 1,500,000 mattresses of different varieties annually and has a turnover of

200 INR crores.

The students were first briefed about Kurl-on as a company, its various businesses and about Bhubaneswar facility by the AGM, who heads the Bhubaneswar plant. The students were assigned designated guides and were taken around the plant facility. The plant manufactures its own foam, produces rubberized coir mattresses and foam mattresses, has its own assembling unit. The students were systematically guided through all the processes in each of the departments and assembly area. There are separate units for foam production, rubberized coir production, coir mattress production, upholstery unit where the mattress cover are stitched, assembly unit where the mattresses are covered with the corresponding covers, packed and labelled ready to be transported. Each

department was clearly marked and the machines were also clearly labelled. The organization follows a zero defect policy which the students could see –since any wastage was recycled and utilized to the maximum. The guides were very

informative who addressed the queries of the students.

After the tour of the plant, the students again assembled back into the training center where the AGM of the plant addressed the queries of the students in a comprehensive manner.

Seeing the theories learnt at work at the Kurl-on factory

Students gained practical insight into how a manufacturing facility operates and could apply the concepts of Operations management learned in class into the field. It was a great practical learning experience for the students.

Industrial Visit to Kurl-on

OPSESSION Issue 1

X-OPS, the Operations committee of

XIMB, organized its 14th annual flagship event, Ashwamedh ‘14, with high zeal and fervor on 2nd of August ‘2014. XOPS always strives to spread awareness and knowledge on Operations Management among the students. It works towards bridging the gap between industry and academics by conducting various events throughout the year. Ashwamedh aims at bringing together eminent personalities from diverse backgrounds to discuss on this year’s theme i.e. “Enhancing the supply chain through business analytics”.

To mark this occasion, XOPS in association with XUB, launched India’s first ever Student Operation’s Committee App (Android-based) wholly designed and developed in-house. Eminent speakers from diverse backgrounds presided over this

auspicious occasion. Personalities like Mr. Yogesh Antad, Senior GM (Supply Chain Functional Excellence) from Cummins India Ltd, Mr. Milind Phadke, Director, Product Management from Oracle Corporation and Mr. Mohammad Ashraf, the VP – US Senior Manager from Deloitte consulting India Pvt. Ltd were the ones who spoke about “how Supply Chain performance can be enhanced using a modern tool called Business Analytics”.

Mr. Yogesh Antad spoke regarding the different phases of data generation in supply chain namely; develop-plan-source-make-deliver-support-replenish. He also spoke about the role of Analytics in Demand Forecasting, Synchronized Business Planning, Network Optimization and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). The huge data collected can be crunched using tools like ERP which helps the corporates in making an informed decision. He stressed upon lead time, responsiveness and reliability and talked about various stages of Simulation

and Analysis, namely; descriptive, predictive and prescriptive. He focused on the key challenges faced in resolving supply chain through business analytics, like visibility, flexibility and integration of global supply chain and logistics, managing demand volatility and high product proliferation.

Mr. Milind Phadke gave insights on the process-flow of Analytics in supply chain. According to him, it includes four stages; capture, manage, analyze and act. He mentioned the steps taken by Oracle to prevent security breach. He explained how increase in structured and unstructured data influences the performance of Analytics’ tools. He said

that unstructured data like attributes, emotions etc. is first transferred to structured data to obtain accurate results (the process is in evolving state). In addition to this, Mr. Phadke said, “The structured and unstructured can be filtered in various stages before being applied to ERP to gauge the sentiments of customer.” He further stated that the data collected from social networks is not very reliable in present scenario.

Mr. Mohammad Ashraf discussed about the issues pertaining to the storage of high data volumes. He also highlighted

the security and affordability in storing the same. A few SMEs go for public cloud computing which reduces the cost, but by compromising on the security aspects. MNCs, where security is of high priority, opt for private cloud servers. As data volume increases, traditional methods for processing information becomes overwhelmed and harmonizing data is the key. Human reasoning when infused with cognitive biases results in sub-optimal decisions. Analytics provides the tools to ameliorate the cognitive biases and deals effectively with the Big Data.

It was truly an enriching experience for the students of XUB.

ASHWAMEDH ‘14

Ashwamedh is the flagship event – a Business Conclave – conducted by X-Ops, where prominent speakers are invited to speak over important issues relating to the field of Operations Management

Ashwamedh ’14

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Gallery

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Opsession Quarterly XIM, Bhubaneswar

Editorial Board

CHIEF EDITOR: RAKESH A

EDITORS: ABHINABA DE

ABHINEET SUDHENDRA

ABINASH MALLIK

NEHA GUPTA

VIJAYKUMAR

COORDINATOR: ABHISHEK ARUN DASH