Reliance Industries Limited is a Fortune 500 company and one of the largest private-sector enterprises in India. Reliance works in multiple domains including - Energy, Materials, Retail, Entertainment and Digital Services. Its retail network is one of the largest and most widespread in India with more than 13000 stores across 7000+ cities, supported by thousands of warehouses. As the fastest growing retailer in the world, Reliance Retail is the only Indian retailer to feature in the Top 100 global retailers of the world.

Industry: Consumer Goods

The Challenge

Reliance serves more than 150 million customers across 7000 cities in India. One of the reasons for its prompt customer service is a strong network of Distribution Centres and Warehouses across India. These distribution centres and warehouses are places of intense activity. The stock of materials is constantly moving on MHEs and forklifts in order to serve customers fast. Even a little lag in the warehouse leads to a snowballing effect and results in thousands of customers waiting for their orders.

With such heavy traffic moving constantly, the warehouse floor was damaged in multiple places leading to an uneven surface with cracks, eroded surface and pits. The uneven surface was leading to operational inefficiency in 3 ways:

1. It lead to lag in material movement
2. It became a source of dust emission thus increasing the cleaning and maintenance cost in the warehouse
3. When MHEs ran on an uneven surface, they demanded more repair, thus increasing the maintenance cost.

To get a levelled floor surface, the warehouse maintenance team tried a variety of floor fillers and coatings including:

1. Epoxy Based Fillers
2. SBR (Rubber Based Fillers)
3. Chemically modified concrete and mortar
4. Bitumen

But none of these fillers lasted much longer than 1-2 months.
The team was spending a substantial amount of time and money but could not find a solution that was - sustainable, viable and reliable.

The Solution

Rezovate’s team did a detailed diagnosis of the floor with several tests and a close inspection of the warehouse floor. We found that the floor’s surface strength was not sufficient enough to support MHEs and Forklifts running on the floor. It was unable to resist abrasion and was therefore continuously being damaged.

We suggested a two-way approach to solve the problem.

1. Filling of existing damage with a suitable filler of required abrasion resistance and sufficient adhesive strength with the old surface underneath.
2. Protecting the floor from future damage by strengthening the entire concrete floor surface. The unique concrete regeneration technology of Odus Hardener increased the surface strength by 3X. It increased the floor MOHS from 3 to 6.5.

The Result

After the treatment with Odus, the floors have been successfully intact despite being extensively tested by the Reliance team. Till now Reliance has saved more than Rs 1 Crore on repair and maintenance of MHEs and the warehouse floor.