A study on the role of leadership and human behavior in fostering logistic safety in FMCG sector in India

In this modern arena of industrialization and urbanization, every industrial sector specially the manufacturing sector being highly dynamic, labor intensive and accident prone due to man machine interaction, behavioral issues of workers and lack of safe infrastructure and awareness. Supply chain and logistics plays a pivotal role in the entire manufacturing sector as it looks after the incoming raw materials, material handling at site and warehouse and its further distribution to the last mile customers. During logistics operation there are certain high risk which may lead to fatality, disablement, property damage, material losses like thus affecting the societal, economic and environmental sustainability. Thus in order to avert those accidents, incidents and dangerous occurrences onsite and offsite safety leadership and behavioral based safety plays an important role. Safety being the moral responsibility of each and every person employed in the organization must follow the top down approach. Safety leadership must be initiated at the top level where the management must show their commitment towards safety and sustainability and should lead by example and provide sufficient infrastructure and training to employees. Behavior based safety approach is a new concept post industrial revolution and encompasses such concepts on psychological safety, mental and physical stress affecting the working behavior. In logistics operators are being fatigue due to excess driving hours, extreme environmental concerns like poor visibility, distracted driving or under influence of alcohol, traffic flows, unsafe actions by road users and once they are fatigued their behavior detoriated which raises the chance of accidents.