Differences in Urban and Rural Areas:

Rural areas require tremendous amount of logistics supply and coordination to make the SCM system effective. That is the lay of Indian society and through one ought to understand and be live to the problem. In fact most of our supplies move generally from these rural areas and therefore you should be aware of these areas in a nutshell. Let us discuss them for a while.

The various criticalities pertaining to logistics in rural areas are following:

• Great quantities and more number of collection points.
• Distance among the manufacturers and users are large.
• Materials are perishable, bulky and expendable and have inferior packaging.
• Certain places ought to be communicated through handcarts, boats, tractors cycles and bullock carts
• Generally Trips are one-way and therefore not cost effective
• Uniformity in work is missing, As; logistics are restricted to peak seasons only      
• A mix of intermediaries are direct delivery
• Storage, movement and packaging of agro products are complicated and time consuming.

There are many more to this based upon the nature of terrain and climatic conditions too, but these are the salient ones and you as a manager ought to understand this aspect. Trading in rural areas is hard and risky too.

Storage in rural areas is another criticality because of restriction in storage areas and because the agro produces is seasonal in nature. These are to be consumed round the year, in season and off-season both. Storage begins right from the time the harvest is ready till it is distributed to the consumers. The several storage places available are following:

• At the farm itself
• Village collection centres/collection points
• With the processor
• Wholesaler
• Bins and self-help store rooms under stringent conditions
• Retailer
• Market place/selling points.

The shelf life of the farm generates is very less and through planned infrastructure has to be developed for proper storage facility like the cold rooms.

Transport in the rural areas is till primitive in nature; beginning from bullock carts, cycles, hand carts, rickshaw van, animal transport , boats, and even stragglers. This is because of bad roads connectivity. In fact movement of goods from rural areas becomes costly due to its handling costs and number of organisations involved in it.