Vietnam campus of the ‘Asian Institute of Technology’ in Ho Chi Min City (HCMC) () has successfully organized a 3-day training course recently on “International Trade Environment of Fruit and Vegetables – one of the potential export products categories of Vietnam”.

I facilitated and conducted the training with marvelous support from an interpreter and translator in Mr. Khang Nguyen, who not only interpreted and translated my spoken and written words, but also mimicked my newly found trainers’ enthusiasm and body language.
 
It would be pertinent to add here that it was only because of commendable efforts and tenacity of Ms Nhien, who contacted me in a faraway country, I had this opportunity to visit Vietnam, a beautiful country, share my trade experiences with witty professionals and best of all, make friends with many lively Vietnamese folks. I can’t thank you more Ms. Nhien.

The training course was conducted by young Ms Nguyen Phuong Thao with such a élan, that is worthy only of a seasoned professional who has seen scores of seasons going through similar training routines. Keep it up Ms. Thao!

(Ms. Thao and Mr. Nguyen, you made my days in Saigon. If it were not you, I would have been completely lost in a communication vacuum. Thanks for your excellent support. The World is language neutral because of people like you.

Coming back to event in context – AIT’s course content addressed the need to assist enterprises, governmental agencies and industry associations to build up capacity of their high level staff that included company directors, senior and middle management, officers and experts who work in the field of cross border trading, exports and promotion of fruit and vegetable products.

Looking at the composition of participants, their familiarity with the subject and their diverse training needs, I intentionally choose the middle path by starting with a broad overview of International Fruit and Vegetable trade, followed by granular view of Vietnam’s fresh produce exports that culminated in identifying Japan as the most promising and potential trade partner. Whole workshop was interspersed with case studies, assignments, group discussions, QA sessions, video presentations etc. – all excellently transferred to participants by Nugyen.
While recognizing that rebuilding of export oriented value chain shall be imperative if Vietnam wants to turnaround its export performance for a developed country like Japan, a mythical value chain turnaround plan was hurriedly build and presented to the participants to apprise them of various steps needed for project identification, capacity building, formulation and design for such a plan. The training course culminated with small teams of 4 members each developing and presenting their own fictitious fruit and vegetable export oriented projects, like initiation of dragon fruit export from Vietnam to Middle East.

In retrospect I may add that the cross-border value chains, especially the chains that include many partners and stakeholders from developing and developed countries, are rather complex since many differences in social, technological and commercial aspects exist between these partners that influence the success of a supply chain. Trust and commitment and a will to survive and succeed are crucial elements to achieve partnerships, chain integration and chain optimization. Because of the different trade environments in which cross-border supply chains operate, chain partners have to deal with several trade rules, regulations and laws, a large logistic network, different levels of technologies, etc. Awareness and knowledge of each other’s ground situation and building / executing action plans is a very important.

Last thoughts…

In less than four days we could talk only of few strategic steps for streamlining fruit and vegetable supply chain in Vietnam. Time was too short to build plethora of strategic options and execute any strategy. A strategy does not mean anything unless executed and executed well which in turns depends upon people and operations, the detailed action plans. The heart of the working of a business, Vietnamese exporters no exception, is how the three processes of people, strategy, and operations link together. Businesses have to master the individual processes and the way they work together as a whole. They are the foundation for the discipline of execution, at the center of conceiving and executing a strategy. They are the differentiation between Vietnamese exporters (or exporters / businessmen from any other country) and its competitors and its closeness to its customers.

Considering many requests from participants and sponsors I am posting here few of the select presentations I made at the event.

After spending 30 plus years with India’s pioneer retailers, buying and / or selling food stuff for them, ‘retailer’ or a ‘food value chain practitioner’ tag is what I like most when I think of addressing myself.

This surely reveals identity of the retailer in title of this post.

So the retailer visits a neighboring mall, this time to buy stuff, a rare occurrence as almost all his shopping is done by his wife.

It is not important why he made an exception this time what is important is two learnings he is going to share here. But the most pertinent point is that the learning he is going to share is perhaps decades old but most of Indian retailers, my honorable colleagues are not listening or I am missing something?
Following is the gist of some unscholarly but profound knowledge that I revisited that Sunday evening.

Learning # 1 revisited

You can have a customer who comes to your far away store just because you have a SINGLE product that s/he wants to take home but s/he buys MANY other things on impulse in the process. Now the store stops stocking that product because it is not fact moving or giving lesser margin but s/he stops coming to that store forever.
Why despite having a mature IT industry and elaborate loyalty programs we have not been able to mine shoppers’ data to plug such loopholes by keeping a bare minimum inventory of products such as in current context.

Where is my Aveon Café Royale Mr. BIG B?

Learning # 2 revisited

Long queue at the checkouts on a sunny summer evening is not something to cheer about; it is symptomatic of a deeper malaise that needs to be figured out before it figures you out.
Believe me, on that sweaty Sunday in just couple of minutes five people, including the humble self, threw the ‘intended buy’ stuff at the cash till and moving out swearing not to visit the store again. Who has time and inclination to wait at the checkout for 30/40 minutes to buy something that has taken just few minutes to pick from the shelf?

MORE customers are sometime counterproductive if one can’t put up systems and processes for quicker checkouts.

Lot of people, particularly Agri business management students, routinely call me to understand the finer differences between the terms value chains and supply chains, how to develop and manage food value chains.

Incidentally, a presentation I recently made at the “Agribusiness Supply Chain Management Conference” during 3rd week of June 2012 in Dhaka, Bangladesh was on farm to fork value chain development. The event was sponsored by International Supply Chain Education Alliance (ISCEA), USA.

My following presentation, which cover most of the above said concerns of students, would not only whet the mental appetite of ‘would be’ new breed of young agribiz managers but surely be of some interest to seasoned agri business practitioners and agri supply chain managers.

P.S. You can always press the ‘arrow’ button to open the full presentation in a new window

Considering requests from many across Bangladesh I am posting here a presentation I made at recently concluded “Agribusiness Supply Chain Management Conference” and workshop during 3rd week of June 2012 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The event was sponsored by International Supply Chain Education Alliance (ISCEA), USA.

Trust following presentation shall be of some interest to other visitors also.

On way to attend a panel discussion at India Cold Storage Conference 2012 on 27th April last month I got floored by the title of the event “Emerging importance of Cold Chain business in India”.

I recalled that way back in 1991 also, as a young officer at Mother Dairy NDDB, I had attended a FICCI conference with a similar title. Why the time has stood still for cold chain business in India?

While being driven down the lovely but isolated expressway in Greater Noida, I thought – had things gone in a natural progression, appropriate event title in 2012 could have been “Emerging importance of RFIDs in Cold Chain business in India”. But that was a wishful thinking. Something is surely putting road blocks. But what?

The answer came flashing. Is anyone trying to build an India specific cold chain or just replicating the European model?

No doubt having a cold chain, as it is perceived normally across the World (precooling, temperature controlled pack houses, reefers, cold stores, CA stores, till house wife’s refrigerator et al) reduce wastage, ensures quality and extends shelf life. But the cost benefit is not same in India as it is elsewhere, particularly Europe and USA, where the produce prices are high and technology relatively cheap. In India it is vice versa. Moreover, though untrue, cold stored produce is not perceived fresh in India.

It is not only price of produce and tech cost but other factors also point out towards this India specific need, for example: In India it is a small holder agriculture which means:

• Small lot size per farmer
• Low economic loads and because of that both product as well as packaging is not standardize. It is difficult to standardize products as pooling of produce don’t fit well with standardization. Everyone plays his own fiddle.
• India’s market mechanisms, the mandi commission agent (arhtiya) system that though fits into small lots and varied packaging but simply does not offer any incentive for improved product quality.

Moreover, India comprises of vast geographic and climatic zones which facilitate production of fruit and vegetables (short product life cycles for majority of products), in one area or another practically round the year for many items. Even within a particular Indian State you have production belts that supplies items. Why store a product to extend.

If someone is interested I can offer hundreds of relevant examples to further demystify what I have said in previous paragraphs.

So there is a need to have India specific cold chain for perishable products.

Just food for thought for planners. In subsequent post I’ll attempt to further elaborate on the subject and offer some solutions. Keep visiting.