Interview of Shailen Shukla on Jumbo Electronics Logistics capabilities in Logistics Middle East Magazine January 2013 issue

1. SUPPLY CHAIN SNAPSHOT | jumbo electronics
SUPPLY
CHAIN
SNAPSHOT
Jumbo
Jumbo Electronics’ Shailen Shukla
talks about the firm’s supply chain.
The flagship company of the Jumbo Group,
Jumbo Electronics Company Ltd. (LLC) was
founded in 1974 by the late M R Chhabria. It
has grown in leaps and bounds since with 30
retail stores and nine service centres across
the United Arab Emirates.
Facilities
The firm is a partner for the world’s leading brands, including
We have large state-of-the-art warehouses outside the Jebel Ali
being one of the largest distributors of Sony products in the world.
free zone for local distribution. We have another warehouse in-
Jumbo’s five principal divisions - Sony, Information Technology,
side the free zone in Dubai, as well as warehouses in Abu Dhabi,
Telecom, Supra and Agencies Divisions - work seamlessly with
Oman, Qatar and Bahrain. Key locations of the warehouses
channels such as the Retail and Corporate Sales, with support are JAFZA, Jebal Ali Industrial Area, MINA and ADH. We have a
from the Central Services and Logistics, to set new benchmarks in state-of- the-art, temperature-controlled warehouses. The ware-
customer service. Logistics Middle East magazine asked Shailen houses runs on a warehouse management system (WMS) called
Shukla, Head of Logistics, Jumbo Electronics, to tell us about its LFS supplied by E+P, Germany. It is a fully automated system
supply chain operations. therefore it minimises our paper and printing costs. Within the
“Logistics is a huge operation and must be efficient so that it warehouse, there is multi-level racking and shelving. We use RF
facilitates sales from the back end. Logistics is the life-line of any based software for picking, putting away, loading and adding a
organization as poor logistics can kill products. Logistics depart- serial number. Mobile work stations inside the warehouse make
ment has one of the largest manpower intensive operations and receiving and dispatching a simpler process.
is the largest fleet in Jumbo,” says Shukla.
24 january 2013 | Logistics Middle East www.arabiansupplychain.com

2. jumbo electronics | SUPPLY CHAIN snapshot
sourced products distribution
Products are sourced from various locations For transportation we
across the globe, but mostly from the US, Eu- use a fleet of 53 vehi-
rope, China, KSA and India. Large appliances cles equipped with GPS
such as air conditioners, refrigerators, televi- systems, using the latest
sions and audio devices are transported by sea. Japanese vehicles such as
Smaller items such as cameras, laptops and mo- Nissan, Isuzu and Toyota.
bile phones are also transported by sea unless We do more than 40 milk
the delivery is urgent then it’s transported by air. runs daily and each milk run
Some shipments come by road from KSA. may have upto 25 custom-
ers. Loading and delivery is
done based on LIFO basis.
The same vehicles also do
“reverse logistics”.
positives to handling your own logistics
1. We have the flexibility of sending material to the market as and when the de-
mand arises. We are not dependent on an outsourced agency to provide vehicles
to service customer demands. 2. Our own crew is more familiar with customer
demands and makes every effort to meet them effectively. 3. It is much cheaper
to handle it ourselves since we are not paying an extra margin (which would be
the case with an outsourced agency). 4. We can train our drivers and helpers ef-
fectively as we expect they will be with us for many years. 5. We have flexibility to
manage manpower in case any crew-member is unwell or on annual leave. There
are crew-members that understand the critical requirements of each customer
and are easily able to fill in. 6. All the crew are given uniforms and safety shoes
and adhere to our rules and regulations.
Volumes
We are handling approximately 400,000
eaches monthly. This volume goes up by
25% during DSF and by 50% during Gitex
Shopper. We have 1,500,000 SFT WH,
5,000 pallet positions, 12,000 shelving
bins, 20,000 bin locations, Our put away,
picking and delivery accuracy is over 99%.
challenges
The biggest challenge that we face is people
management. This needs to be tackled
efficiently to keep customers happy. The
safety of the goods is also a concern, as one
vehicle carries over Dh100,000 worth of
goods while transporting. However, we
have never had any major incident of
theft or misappropriation. Another chal-
lenge we face is during the summer months
– air conditioning in vehicles doesn’t remain
effective, and our helpers have to go and
deliver the products by hand to the shops
during peak hours of the summer.
www.arabiansupplychain.com Logistics Middle East | january 2013 25