On the product front, we at Godrej have developed a unique warehouse mobility product – SKUtro, says Anil Lingayat, Executive Vice President & Business Head, Godrej Material Handling
With strict guidelines, the government has allowed organisations to restart their business. What are the operational strategies you have adopted to commence your business taking into consideration safety concerns of the employees as well growth of the organisation?
At Godrej, safety is always paramount and without compromise. Before commencing operations in June, our teams from manufacturing, process engineering, stores and safety developed new workstation arrangements and workflows to ensure social distancing without affecting materials movement. We started with only 25% manpower and ramped it up in stages to full strength. A second shift helped us maintain service levels to the market while maintaining social distancing in the factory. Various measures like daily and regular temperature checks and oximeter readings, blocking of half the seats in transport vehicles, canteen and meeting areas, daily sanitization of stores, work areas, transport vehicles, etc, have also been implemented. Similar processes and changes in layout, workflows have been instituted at our branches and rental fleet depots all across the country. Most of the office staff are working from home and leveraging digital tools for meetings. Under our rental brand, RenTRUST, we also operate a large fleet of over 700 forklifts which is operated and managed by over 1000 operators, technicians and administrative staff. To ensure the safety of our and our customers’ staff we have taken various on-site measures such as daily sanitization of equipment, proper PPE, training and insurance cover.
Our forklifts come with unique accessories– like PIN and biometric access systems – that keep a record of the operators using them. In the event of any operators being affected by the virus, the forklift access system’s data log can help a customer identify who were the forklift operators in what sequence and thereby take proactive steps to help those employees. A couple of months after operations commenced, we observed an increase in demand as customers ramped up their businesses. We developed special service packages to help our customers revive forklift trucks that may have remained idle for a long duration during the lockdown to ensure that there would be no unexpected failures after commencing operations. As most of the economy is now open and working to ramp up, driving the demand for forklifts again, all safety measures, social distancing and work-from-home are being practiced diligently at Godrej. We have leveraged several digital tools to interact and transact with our customers, channel partners and suppliers so that business can continue as normally as possible. We expect that this will largely be the new way of life for the foreseeable future.
In this pandemic period the e-commerce sector has shown exceptional growth. Keeping with demand and customers’ feedback, which are the MHE products you have launched for the e-commerce sector?
On the product front, we at Godrej have developed a unique warehouse mobility product – SKUtro. It is a manually powered trolley cart that enables order pickers to quickly zip around the warehouse, compiling delivery orders. Designed specifically for young people usually employed for this task, SKUtro brings an element of fun to the otherwise tedious order picking activity and helps in getting greater throughput. The e-commerce industry largely relies on electric battery powered forklifts of various types. Godrej Material Handling leads the market in indigenous electric forklifts serving this sector. While our range caters to almost all the needs of e-Commerce companies, the latest trends for new offerings are more in the area of digitally enabled services like equipment monitoring, fleet optimization, advance warning of equipment failure, integration with warehouse management systems, etc. Along with our channel partners we offer a range of Godrej forklifts on rental under the RenTRUST brand. With rental durations raging from a few weeks to 5 years, this is an ideal solution for e-Commerce players to meet wide variations in demand for material handling capacity at their warehouses.
Godrej Material Handling is also actively investing in digitization to enhance customer experience through telematics. Our IoT driven system ‘SafeLog’will empower customers to manage their fleet at multiple locations with real time information about the health and utilization of their Godrej fleet. Based on data captured by this system, advance warnings of potential equipment failure are generated that enablesthe Godrej Service team to respond before the eventuality. This ensures that the equipment stays in operation with minimal downtime. Data about forklift utilization helps the customer optimize their fleet size to suit each location’s demand levels. Reminders about scheduled services to Godrej and the user ensure that periodic serving of the forklifts is done in time.
With the boom in online purchasing, the e-commerce industry has fast-tracked setting-up of new warehouse capacities, catalysing a surge in demand for forklifts. For all new projects and major capacity expansions of our customers, we areinvolved early on to get a detailed understanding of theirapplication and operations such as – racking layout, duty cycle, required throughput, type of pallets and goods to be handled and so on. This helps us in developing and recommending solutions that are best suited to their needs. In addition, we also offer tailor-made service and rental packages to ensure fleet availability and scaling to meet their needs. We also offer various financing options for our customers through our partners that helps address liquidity challenges, if any. Godrej Material Handling along with two other businesses of Godrej –Godrej Storage Solutions – India’s largest warehouse racking and shelving provider and Godrej Consoveyo – a leader in warehouse automation –together, offer comprehensive techno-commercial solutions that are driven by market requirements.
Please take us through your product profile for the warehousing sector?
We recently introduced the Bravo electric 3-wheel forklifts which add to our existing electric range thereby expanding our offerings to warehouse operators. Designed for loading / unloading goods carriers and moving pallets within the warehouse, these forklifts are exceptionally quiet, manoeuvrable and green in terms of their impact on the environment, a classic fit for warehouses. Godrej’s electric forklifts are equipped with the latest safety features. The various built-in safety interlocks prevent a forklift from starting if the operator is not correctly seated. Automatic slowdown around sharp turns keeps the truck stable and safe, averting any likeliness of toppling. Digital instrument clusters provide information about various parameters of the forklift in real-time and aid with self-diagnostics. Cushioned hydraulics ensure jerk-free lifting and lowering of pallets. All Godrej forklifts use AC motors which they are almost maintenance free and far more energy efficient than DC motors. We also offer a variety of safety accessories to our customers. This ranges from basic accessories like seatbelts to more advanced ones like PIN/biometric access control, blue movement indicator lights, red halo lights, camera systems, etc.
Godrej is investing in IoT based vehicle monitoring systems as well as its integration with warehouse management systems. With digital tools gaining wider acceptance especially among the younger generation of managers and forklift operators, our product manuals and training programs are already digitized. We are now working on completely digitising our service operations. Apart from forklifts we are also expanding our range of electric powered Reach Trucks, a specialized narrow aisle equipment that is ideal for the racking aisles of warehouses to pick and place pallets of goods. With the increased demand of our customers’ requirement to handle heavier base loads and/or utilize the available height, Godrej Material Handling has expanded its range of Reach Trucks to accommodate weight capacities of up to 2 tonnes and heights of up to 11 m.
Follow