education and professional learning to match the supply chain
industry’s requirements. He and I
still joke that he converted me from
an electronics geek to a supply
chain professional.
What are your responsibilities
at The Pepsi Bottling Group? Q
A I am the director of supply chain. My primary responsibilities include infrastructure
strategy and planning, which
comprises distribution network planning, optimization, and automation;
capacity planning; facility
planning; simulation; and
storage mode selection and
design. It also includes
inventory management and
systems, and supply chain
execution systems. I am
helping to coordinate an
initiative that crosses all of
these responsibilities. It’s a transformational project that is focused on
ROIC (return on invested capital),
increasing storage utilization, and
effective work management.
b
to
ca
Q
A
What do you like best about
your work?
I’m fortunate to be working
for PBG. The top leadership’s
energy, passion, and commit-
ment are evident in
every action they
take, and that cas-des from top to bot-m. Our worldwide vice president of supply chain is a
visionary who constantly
challenges our thinking
and the way we operate,
and encourages “out of the
ox” thinking. My boss, the vice
president of logistics and transportation, is a superb thinker
and a great leader. I am also
Go to ja
track re
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blessed to work with a team of A+ players
with a great blend of intellect, industry
experience, history at Pepsi, and diversity.
You’ve collaborated with the consulting firm Richard Muther & Q
Associates on a book and now are working
on another with Muther. What are the
books about?
A I worked with Lee Hales on Simplified Systematic Network Planning. Lee has
great knowledge of how to apply the formulation of a process to a subject area. I am
also working with Mr. Muther on Planning
by Design. The book is based on his experience, which spans over 2,000 projects. The
thinking is revolutionary. It focuses on a
predesigned, orderly way of thinking about
a project in any subject area. It defines a
repeatable methodology for speeding up
project planning. With a “planning by
design” working model, the planner has a
comprehensive planning structure that can
be expressed in the terms and techniques of
the specific project at hand. Just as you
don’t go from strategy to action planning
without defining tactics, you cannot jump
from a general framework to a specific
project without building a working model
bridging the two.
Do you have any advice for other
young supply chain professionals? Q
A To be successful in supply chain man- agement, as in any other profession,
you need three “Es”: education, experience,
and exposure. Education provides the basic
qualifications for entry (but it should never
stop). Experience is the number of mistakes
you have made and how you have learned
from them. Exposure is the ability to put
yourself in the right place, at the right time,
with the right people.
Continually focus on where you stand
today and where you want to go, and build
a plan to work through the gaps. Assimilate
all you can about a subject area and organize that knowledge into its hard (tangible),
soft (process), and sensitive (personnel)
characteristics. It is always easy to come up
with a tangible solution that is very expensive, but sometimes you need to step back
and look at a problem in terms of its process
and personnel characteristics in order to
derive the most cost-effective solution. ;
