Ujjwalkumar Mane
Procurement Leader Group-9, CPO-Marketing
Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd.
PGEMP Batch 83 | Year: 2021-2024
2021: Team Lead, Non-SAP applications and SAP Training Centre, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd.
When I started the project, BPCL had 20,000 outlets selling petrol, diesel, CNG, lubricants, etc. across India. My project focused on automating petrol pumps with cutting-edge technology in Maharashtra and Goa. The purpose was to monitor the performance of RO under the KPIs of – Uptime, Retail Selling Price (RSP), Process, Quality, and Safety. This would prevent pumps from running dry and ensure all dispensing units were always full and in use. It would also incorporate quality control measures to ensure that fuel adhered to quality standards, and ensure accurate measurement and authenticity of products sold at the prescribed RSP.
While checklists are in place, physical inspection of every dispenser for quality and accuracy every day is impossible because of the 24/7 nature of the business. We also needed to account for the downtime to maintain dispensers and factor distances, altitudes, and mobile connectivity across the huge BPCL India network.
Few dealers were initially apprehensive about the automation of outlets, perceiving it as a form of surveillance. We addressed their concerns by educating them on the benefits, such as reduced downtime of their dispensers and automatic orders when stock reached certain levels. Moreover, automation would display the health of dispensing units, show real-time stocks, prompt indents for orders, acknowledge delivery through an interlocking system, and reduce downtime.
My project aimed for 92% uptime of equipment at retail outlets in Maharashtra and Goa from the existing 72%. We delivered 97.7%. The product stock monitoring at the retail outlets increased from 80% to 100%. The state office of Maharashtra and Goa ranked no 1 across all uptime parameters for 8 consecutive months. They also reached 100% RSP in each sales area. Even today, these two states rank among the top 3 state offices in the BPCL network.
These are excerpts from his interview featured in the PGEMP Impact Book (January 2025)