Reimagining HUL: The Total Enterprise Reinvention Journey

In conversation with Akhilesh Yadav, GM - Digital Supply Chain Transformation and Manufacturing Excellence, South Asia SC, Unilever, and Manish Gupta, Managing Director and Lead - Products, Accenture in India – as a part of the BT Accenture Leadership Dialogues, hosted by Aayush Ailawadi, Technology Editor, Business Today, at the award-winning HUL Dapada Digital Factory in Silvassa.

Digital transformation of the supply chain is becoming a key factor for the growth of consumer goods companies in India. It is impacting every area of the connected ecosystem in the industry. And leading from the front with it is Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), Unilever’s India arm.

Its Reimagine HUL programme is ushering in a new way of working for its supply chain operations in India. Driven by digital technologies, data and analytics, the programme interconnects the critical ecosystems of consumer, customer, and operations. It helps the company understand what the latest trends are in consumer demand, and enables demand capturing and fulfilment in an agile, cost-effective, and sustainable manner.

“For the last decade, HUL has been on a transformation journey. Our purpose has been to evolve into an intelligent enterprise, and eventually double our turnover,” says Akhilesh Yadav.

HUL’s digital transformation journey is a step in the right direction and one such example is the Dapada factory being recognised as an Advanced Fourth Industrial Revolution Lighthouse and Sustainability Lighthouse by the World Economic Forum (WEF) enabled by implementation of next gen technologies, including digitally enabled manufacturing processes that have amplified speed and agility, and has lessened environment impact by reducing energy, water and material waste.

Accenture has a two-decade long relationship with Unilever and HUL wherein they have driven multiple industry defining initiatives. Recently, Accenture and Microsoft collaborated with Unilever to make it a cloud-only organization with no disruption to business.

“The predictability in the supply chain in Consumer Goods company has gone,” points out Manish Gupta. “We are already clocking an 800-basis points increase in cost of goods sold and the industry is already in stress due to growing inflation. The increased cost cannot be passed on to the consumer but could be effectively dealt with by unleashing the power of digital and data.”

This digital- and data-led automation powers and optimizes HUL’s entire supply chain and helps in demand sensing and forecasting. The result? Says Akhilesh Yadav: “Cost per ton in production is down by 40 per cent, quality offered to the customer has improved by 30 per cent, and the lead time has reduced by 50 per cent. Sustainability KPIs have also improved in line with Unilever goals.”

Accenture has been co-innovating with HUL in defining next frontier in digital supply chain journey to bring optimization and efficiencies in the end-to-end supply chain across source, plan, make and deliver.

With this Total Enterprise Reinvention, the stage is set for bigger goals. “With initiatives like Make in India, the entire world is looking at India as a hub for large-scale manufacturing at scale and in a cost optimised manner. That’s the need of the hour: to make India the powerhouse of manufacturing,” says Manish Gupta.

The prime drivers to achieve these goals are, inarguably, the twin powers of digital and data.

WATCH BT-Accenture Leadership Dialogues Episode 1 - Reimagining HUL