expects to learn as much from its new
hires as they will learn from the company.
Playing catchup
The recruiting initiative, which Gibbons
says absorbs about 40 percent of his time
these days, is the last piece of a puzzle that
began forming in July 2008, when the 48-
year-old Scotsman was promoted after
one year at Starbucks to head up its
worldwide supply chain.
What he found wasn’t encouraging.
Years of extraordinary expansion had put
growth in the driver’s seat, with the supply chain essentially coming along for the
ride. And it wasn’t a particularly helpful
passenger—it was constantly behind the
curve, struggling just to meet the burgeoning demands of Starbucks’ stores.
Before Gibbons took the reins, costs had
risen faster than sales for three years running. There were no metrics to measure
service performance, and when Gibbons
instituted measurement criteria in 2008,
he discovered that less than half of all
store orders in the United States and
Canada were delivered on time.
“All we were trying to do was keep up,”
says Dale Perrott, the company’s vice president of global supply chain development.
Perrott, who in six years at Starbucks’ supply chain division has borne witness to its
incredible growth arc, says the company
was too busy building its brand, opening
stores (sometimes as many as eight a day),
and satisfying a rapidly expanding customer base to give its supply chain the
attention it deserved. “There was no focus
on getting us aligned with how a supply
chain would operate,” he says.
Under Gibbons, that changed. Through a
near total revamp of Starbucks’ supply
chain, the company has realized significant
improvements. (To read more about the
company’s supply chain overhaul, look for
a companion story in the Quarter 4 edition
of CSCMP’s Supply Chain Quarterly.)
Today, on-time delivery performance to
Starbucks’ 16,500 worldwide stores—
70,000 weekly deliveries in all—is close to
90 percent and getting better, Gibbons says.
With internal processes firmly in place and
performance improving, Gibbons feels he
can now shift his focus from the short-term
fix to the longer-term strategic initiative.
Gibbons admits that Starbucks—
which turns 40 next year—is “
starting from scratch” with its recruitment program, and professes a sense
of urgency to complete the task
ahead of him.
“Our business is growing, the
competition for top supply chain tal-
ent is intense, and our entry into
campus recruiting has come later
than many other supply chains seek-
ing similar talent,” Gibbons says.
