Meera had been in the planning team for three years when she first walked through the regional warehouse in November and saw pallets stacked to the roof with a product the company had been celebrating all season. Sales had looked wonderful. The reports said so. And yet here it was, shrink-wrapped and unmoving.
She asked the warehouse manager how long it had been there. He shrugged and said the distributors kept taking it, so the factory kept sending it.
At the head office, success was measured by what left the factory. That number was rising. But distributors were taking stock because the quarterly scheme rewarded them for it, and many of them were now sitting on more than they could sell before the next season.
What farmers were actually buying at the shop counter was a different number, and almost nobody at the head office could see it. Meera realised the company had been steering by the speed of its own shipments, not by anyone's real need.
She did something unfashionable: she took three weeks and visited distributors and shopkeepers in four districts, with no agenda except to listen. The picture was not dramatic. Rain had shifted what farmers were sowing in two of the districts. A competitor's product suited the new crop better. Shopkeepers were too polite, or too busy, to say so.
None of this was in any report. All of it was obvious from a morning in a shop.
The changes were modest. The next scheme rewarded sell-through instead of stocking. A short monthly note from key distributors, covering what they held and what moved, started arriving at the planning desk. Production plans were set in ranges with room to adjust, not in single numbers fixed months ahead.
The warehouse did not empty overnight. But the next November, when Meera walked through it, there was floor space, and the manager said something she kept thinking about: for the first time, what we make looks like what people want.