ancestors was an executive at the Pennsylvania Railroad in
the late 1800s. My dad was also a brakeman on the Illinois
Central Railroad for a short time.
QSo you have train depots in your blood, and your career has taken you first to Office Depot and now to
The Home Depot. So you just sort of switched depots?
A Yes. We all want to go from office to home, I think.
QHow did your experience at Office Depot prepare you for the role that you have now at The Home Depot?
A Office Depot was founded a number of years after The Home Depot. The Office Depot formula liberally
copied The Home Depot formula, all the way down to not
building an upstream distribution infrastructure. At Office
Depot, that created problems much earlier than it did here.
Many of the things that The Home Depot is going through
at this point I went through at Office Depot some years ago,
so it was good preparation.
QCould you tell us a little about the strategy behind The Home Depot’s distribution network remodeling
project?
A The primary issue was a lack of central distribution for our stores. This led to a lot of poor in-stock condi-
tions, inconsistent inventory turns, and inflated logistics
costs. In addition, the store folks spent a lot more time on
supply chain tasks than they would if we had a central dis-
tribution infrastructure. Now, we’ve got 12 rapid deploy-
ment centers, or RDCs, up and running. We plan to have 19
to serve 100 percent of our stores by the end of 2010.
QHas the economy affected your remodeling initiative, or is it something you’ve been able to do in spite of
the downturn?
A Certainly the economy has been an issue in the home- improvement business. But we’ve not allowed this
opportunity to go by. The slowdown in business, I think, has
actually benefited the supply chain transformation. It has
been an advantage to not have the pressure of high growth
in sales to deal with on top of remodeling our supply chain.
QWhat would you say is the biggest takeaway from this process?
A It’s an arduous journey. You’ve got to make sure that you manage change effectively. Centralizing important
functions is a big cultural shift for The Home Depot. A big
part of managing programs like this is effectively managing
risk. We spent a lot of time thinking about all the things that
could go wrong and figuring out how to avoid them. I think
a big part of the process is to not fear tackling a big project.
No risk, no reward in some ways. This program has required
some fortitude on our part. We’ve made big changes very
quickly. But we owe it to our customers and our shareholders to act fast on these kinds of key opportunities.
Doug Jones
DOUG JONES IS THE EXECUTIVE VICE
president, global supply chain operations for
MSC Industrial Direct Co., a Melville, N. Y.-based company that supplies nearly 600,000
different items to the industrial marketplace. Among the items it distributes are
hand tools, hardware, safety equipment, janitorial supplies, and cutting tools and products for metal work.
Jones has been leading MSC through the
largest strategic supply chain initiative in the
company’s history. Known as the fulfillment optimization
program, the initiative includes a move to paperless processing, establishing engineered standards, and enhancing
customer service.
Jones joined MSC in 2001 as vice president of fulfillment.
He later was promoted to senior vice president of logistics
and then to senior vice president, supply chain management
before taking up his current position last October. Prior to
joining MSC, Jones held various managerial positions in fulfillment, finance, purchasing, and inventory management at
Fisher Scientific and McMaster-Carr Supply Co.
QYou studied accounting in college. What led you from the financial end of
the business to supply chain management?
A I got my accounting degree to get a solid business background, but I never really
wanted to be an accountant. When I was with
McMaster-Carr, I was in the management
program learning a lot of different aspects of
business, and eventually I began managing
their warehouse and supply chain. And I
found that I really like that aspect of the business. But with my accounting background, I can hold my
own with CFOs, so that has been a huge advantage for me.
QWhat has been the biggest challenge you have under- taken in your career?
A There are a number of things I can point to. In my first role at MSC, I was responsible for customer fulfillment. I learned that while nothing was really broken, we
managed our operations with brawn, not brain. There were
things we could improve on, so I had to convince the rest of
the management team to mess with the “secret sauce.”
