Resilience Role of Distribution Centers amid COVID-19 Crisis in Tier-A Cities of India: A Green Field Analysis Experiment

Abstract

Supply chain is the most critical lifeline of all business/non-business operations and processes in today’s world. The outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic has a serious impact on organizations and society at large. Due to this pandemic spread, food supply chains are facing two unique unraveling emerging supply chain challenges: (a) supply shocks and (b) demand shocks. Stocking of consumer staples under such uncertain situations gives rise to uncertain peak demands of staple food, and hence striking bullwhip effect. The present study focuses on the staple food distribution among tier-A cities of India, namely Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Ahmedabad. Using the software anyLogistix PLE edition, greenfield analysis was conducted to find the number of distribution centers required by these cities for food distribution and to reduce the transportation cost between the cities. Two key insights emerge from the analysis: (a) we need six potential areas to locate distribution centers (DCs)/ regional sites instead of a single DC; (b) transportation cost is reduced from US$21,327 to US$2,375. The major observation from the Green Field Analysis (GFA) reveals there is a need to reinforce and repair the operational efficiencies of DCs so as to reach the needy end consumers.