Returnable systems and usable availability 5 min read
The practitioner
Sonal Orvelkar
The returned frames arrived together, so the stock report treated them as one useful number. Inspection told a different story. Sixty-three of the 240 needed to be held; forty-one could later be repaired and released, while twenty-two were retired. That distinction captures much of my work as an operations leader. Material moves through the factory and back from customers in categories that are convenient to count. My responsibility is to ask whether those categories describe something the next person can actually use.
03 / Inspection before returnable-stock recognition
04 / Preparation quantities matched to usable time
Production and operations leadership
28 years
Career begins July 1998
Operations colleagues
330
Five managers across two sites
Annual operating expense
₹79 crore
₹6.4 crore approved capital expenditure
The next user needs the right material in the right condition
I am COO of Zerqavi Transit Materials in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar. We make paper-honeycomb transit protection and reusable dunnage for non-food industrial goods, with a second site in Satara. The company employs 480 people and recorded ₹168 crore revenue and ₹18.6 crore operating profit in FY2026. I lead 330 operations colleagues through five managers, with ₹79 crore annual expense and ₹6.4 crore approved capital expenditure. Quality head Rafiq Neshvali reports separately to CEO Meena Talverhi; release decisions remain with qualified colleagues.
I entered paper-components manufacturing in 1998 after production engineering. My responsibilities grew through production management, plant leadership and a two-site operations role. The recurring lesson was that a completed process step does not settle what the next person receives. Panels can change during storage. Correctly made components can be assembled into a kit with mixed revisions. A returned frame can look available in a count before inspection establishes whether it can be used again. Operating responsibility includes those intervals and classifications.
The cases here describe four bounded decisions in a fictional business. We funded better storage arrangements after a defined panel review, changed kit segregation after mixed-revision dispatches, paid to inspect and restore part of a returned-dunnage group and reduced adhesive preparation quantities when the usable window was being exceeded. Each decision displaced time or money and retained a technical boundary. The figures are observations in named groups, not a claim that every product performs under every condition or that reuse automatically delivers a particular environmental benefit.
Storage condition remained part of the manufacturing account
Eighteen of eighty-four panels in a defined stored group failed the applicable bow criterion. An ₹82 lakh storage and handling programme was followed by a comparable group with four of eighty-four failures, retained for further investigation.
A complete kit could still contain incompatible revisions
Nine of thirty-six reviewed dispatches contained mixed-revision components. A ₹47 lakh segregation and kit-identity programme reduced the count to one in the subsequent thirty-six-dispatch review, without treating that remaining case as immaterial.
A return count was not a usable-stock count
Of 240 returned dunnage frames, sixty-three were held after inspection. Forty-one were repaired and released through the qualified process; twenty-two were retired. The ₹69 lakh programme retained the cost and the unusable group.
Current focus
I am examining the handovers where material changes condition or identity without the operating report noticing. The question is whether the next user receives a technically accepted item for the intended application, not simply whether the previous department completed its task.
Conversations I welcome
I would consider a first non-executive appointment with an industrial board, provisionally twenty days annually, subject to employer consent, relationship review and the actual duties.
Beyond the page
The record behind the perspective.
Formation
BE in Production EngineeringNervali Engineering College · 1998
Postgraduate Diploma in Packaging OperationsQorzemi Materials Institute · 2009; part-time
Sonal kept the cost of making returns usable in the operating proposal. The board saw the inspection, repair and retirement decisions behind the stock number, rather than a claim that every item arriving back could immediately serve another customer.
Meena TalverhiChief Executive Officer, Zerqavi Transit MaterialsThe full record ↗
Contact
I would consider a first non-executive appointment with an industrial board, provisionally twenty days annually, subject to employer consent, relationship review and the actual duties.
