thoughtleaders
BY MITCH MAC DONALD, GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
making the ordinary
extraordinary
interview with
Brent Beabout
Brent Beabout of Office Depot has made a career of developing innovative IT solutions
for logistics problems. And the kinds of technologies he’s used might surprise you.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM HOLDS THAT FOR
logistics professionals, the path to the top starts in the warehouse. A summer job driving a forklift leads to a mid-level
warehouse supervisor position, and things take off from
there. If the individual turns out to have an aptitude for
technology and develops expertise in IT tools along the way,
so much the better.
Brent Beabout, however, took a very different path. In
fact, Beabout, who is Office Depot’s vice president of global network strategy and transportation, essentially did the
whole thing in reverse. He started out in engineering and
information technology, and as he puts it, kind of fell into
logistics and supply chain management by accident.
But once he got there, he stayed. Over the years, Beabout
has held a variety of DC management positions for
Amazon.com as well as serving as vice president of engineering for DHL Express—all jobs that allowed him to
leverage his technological expertise. Now at Office Depot,
he continues to focus on ways to use technology to improve
his company’s logistics operations and its bottom line.
Beabout is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University
with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering. He
also holds a Master of Science degree in engineering from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an M.B.A.
from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He spoke recently
with DC VELOCITY’S group editorial director, Mitch Mac
Donald, about his career, what skills supply chain managers
need today, and the eye-popping results he’s gotten from
solutions built using ordinary off-the-shelf technologies.
QCould you walk us through your career path to date?
AI guess I’ve had a pretty unusual career path in com- parison with most folks in the supply chain field. I
started out as a nuclear submarine officer in the U.S. Navy.
