Case study : Radhakrishna Foodland Pvt Ltd - Intelligent food supply solution

Set up in 1993 in Mumbai, Radhakrishna Foodland Pvt Ltd (RFPL) has lived up to the challenging and demanding needs of their supply chain requirements and their relationship has grown stronger by the day. In 2001, a  transport & logistics wing  Radhakrishna  Foodland Carriers Pvt. Ltd. was also set up to improve its services.  RFPL was mainly operating in temperature controlled  food transportation across India, but currently the main focus is in both temperature controlled and dry goods across sectors like quick service restaurants, food service, FMCG, pharma, retail and consumer durables, etc. Headquartered in Mumbai, Radhakrishna Foodland offers a comprehensive range of supply chain solutions which include the entire gamut and gambit of warehousing, transportation and 3PL requirements.

Besides supply chain management, the company is also in to project management & consultancy in all aspects of supply chain functions. Shared user services too are offered at select locations for smaller players. The company has the ability to minimise stock holding, expedite product from point of manufacture to point of consumption and optimise the strategic locations of warehousing. Warehousing also covers a range of value added services apart from inventory management. Their client list starts with big names like McDonald’s, Sodexho, Bharti - Walmart, Pepsi Foods, Subway and Papa Johns, etc.

CASE STUDY

RFPL started operations with the McDonald’s account. Mcdonald’s is the multi-national quick service restaurant with a wide presence pan India.

Challenge

McDonald’s stores were delivered frozen, chilled and dry goods, requiring movements in different temperatures. Hence for far off stores, the deliveries were made in separate vehicles depending on the temperature required. This resulted in higher transportation cost due to more trips and low vehicle capacity utilisation, and usage of more manpower in loading and unloading. It also caused inconvenience to McDonald’s stores which were receiving multiple deliveries and multiple documents. There was a need for a supply chain solutions system through which all the three types of goods, i.e., frozen, chilled and dry, could be delivered together at a time, without compromising on the food product integrity with transport cost optimisation.

Solutions

Against the conventional single temperature trucks, need of a truck carrying multiple temperature products was felt. To make it happen, RFPL provided a multi-temperature refrigeration unit, which was installed on trucks. These units have two evaporators which enable temperature setting for frozen and chilled products at a time. The units were imported. The company also made the customised partitions. These partitions are used as separator wall between two temperature zones. This was developed in-house by RK Foodland. Also, truck containers were made with two side doors in additions to the rear door. The side doors are used to unload products without disturbing the products carried in other temperature zones. Since the technical knowhow on repairing the multi-temperature reefer units were limited in the country, the down time of such trucks was very high. Thus RK Foodland came out with a truck which had two single units, fixed in such a way that the truck can have two temperature sensitive compartments and one ambient section. With this the down time reduced, as the company already had the experience of maintaining single temperature units.

Benefits

The service facilitated getting the consolidated delivery of frozen, chilled and dry at a time. Also, it helped in cost saving in transportation and manpower; against carrying approximately 150 cases per truck, the multi-temperature trucks carried 500 cases per truck with a mix of frozen, chilled and ambient products.

It was convenient for the McDonald’s store to receive all the goods at a single time window, which resulted in one order, one invoice and one delivery.

‘Supply Chain Management in India can really thrive with a little bit of awareness and some stringent legislation from government for quality monitoring’

Purvin Patel, Chief Operating Officer, Radhakrishna Foodland Pvt Ltd