Head – Supply Chain Management, Cummins ltd. | CPIM | Pune, India
Pravin Shegade is a supply chain leader with more than 17 years of experience across rail, engines, specialty chemicals, wind energy and steel. He is CPIM certified and holds a Lean Six Sigma certification. His work focuses on making planning decisions faster, more accurate and able to correct themselves. Today he applies that focus to AI and intelligent systems.
He is Head of Supply Chain Management at Cummins India Ltd. (since February 2015). There he is building the supply chain function for a distribution business. His remit covers process setup, governance and performance management, warehouse and material handling infrastructure, and the oracle ERP rollout across inventory, warehousing, production planning, procurement and dispatch.
He led demand planning, inventory and logistics for the fuel systems business across plants in Wuhan, Columbus, India and Mexico. His teams brought backorders down to 5% of the total order book. He directed the repositioning of $6 million of excess inventory across 68 sites and cut cycle times by 32%. He also delivered cost reduction worth more than 1.2% of total sales a year. His automation in analytics using Power BI for inventory and past-due tracking saved 247 reporting hours annually. He also led the IQR inventory quality implementation and an inventory compliance programme across more than 200 warehouses in India.
At Henkel Adhesive Technology (2010–2015) he headed the planning department. He designed and implemented Sales and Operations Planning from inception and developed it into a mature level 2 process. He also led the SAP and forecasting system implementations and developed local vendors, saving INR 3.2 crore a year. At Suzlon Energy (2007–2010) he established the Central Planning Cell for windfarm projects. He ran 15-month demand forecasting for markets in Europe, the USA and Australia. He also completed an assignment in Australia to define a ten-year critical spares strategy. His career began at Essar Steel, where he managed the Continuous Galvanizing Line project and supervised a team of eight engineers.
Pravin is also an active researcher. He has done papers and book publications from on how AI is reshaping supply chain decisions. His themes include:
• Supply Chain Analytics
• AI for autonomous S&OP decision-making
• Predictive and prescriptive analytics for backorder reduction
• Multi-echelon inventory optimisation
• AI-based decision intelligence for smart distribution networks
His broader work covers ERP strategy and change management, master data and data governance, supply chain risk, sustainability, and upskilling teams for AI-augmented operations.
