AIn my early teens, I quickly realized that professional sports were not an option. So my father, who was a
DC manager, enlisted me to work for him during the summer breaks. I really enjoyed the fast-paced, ever-changing
environment. While going to college, I stayed on and continued to learn more about the entire supply chain. I loved
it—and I’ve been at it ever since.
QWhat do you consider to be your greatest profession- al accomplishment to date?
AIt would be the development of my Mission Action Program team here at Stonyfield. What started as a
management-level program has been driven all the way
down through the supply chain ranks. To hear transporta-
tion and warehouse employees being passionate about what
we’re trying to do—eliminate CO2—is pretty exciting.
They are, after all, making the biggest impact in their day-
to-day jobs.
J. Paul Dittmann
J. PAUL DITTMANN ADMITS THAT EVEN
while he was carving out a successful career
in private industry, he felt drawn to academia. “It was always a bit of a tug,” he says.
Today, Dittmann is executive director of
the newly formed Global Supply Chain
Institute at the University of Tennessee, a
position with wide-ranging responsibilities
that include organizing global supply chain
forums and coordinating the school’s supply
chain executive and M.B.A. programs.
He joined UT in 2005 after a long career with Whirlpool
Corp. There, he progressed through the ranks, eventually
becoming vice president of supply chain strategy for projects and systems. In that post, he was responsible for developing and implementing the company’s supply chain strategy and for overseeing projects focused on customer service.
Last year, Harvard Business Press published The New
Supply Chain Agenda, a book Dittmann wrote with Reuben
Slone and the late John T. (Tom) Mentzer.
Dittmann earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D.
degrees at the University of Missouri.
QTell us about the new institute and your work there.
ATennessee has always been one of the top-ranked sup- ply chain schools, with many supply chain offerings.
For example, we have the supply chain forum consisting of
50 sponsoring companies. We conduct a lot of executive
education programs along with our supply chain degree
programs. We perform supply chain audits. With this broad
scope, we needed to have some way to link together all these
programs and provide a common face to the outside world.
In addition, we are launching some aggressive supply
chain programs around the world. For example, we will
introduce a new global supply chain executive M.B.A. program that includes residencies in South America, Europe,
and Asia. With all that going on, we needed a
common thread.
QYou mentioned supply chain audits. How do those work?
AWe begin by interviewing a cross sec- tion of people to get a good feel for
what’s going on in their areas. We’ve touched
so many companies—we probably have a
database of about 300 firms—that we can
draw on a wide array of best practices.
In the audit itself, we address three things: here’s what
you’re doing now, here are industry best practices, and these
are our recommendations for closing the gap. It takes about
a week to do the interviews and a month to do the comparison of best practices and write the report. We learn a lot in
the process.
QWhen’s the best time to do an audit?
AA good time to do a supply chain audit is when a new chief comes in or when someone without a supply
chain background takes over. Another is when a company
has a specific problem it wants to address—like too much
inventory or the need to achieve better availability.
Sometimes, we’re asked to look at the supply chain organization. We always want to focus on the big issues or pain
points.
QWhat are some of the main challenges you see?
AIt’s kind of interesting and surprising. We do these audits for a wide range of companies, but it seems
that whether they’re manufacturers or retailers, whether
they’re large or small, they all wrestle with the same core
problems. For example, everyone seems to have problems
with too many SKUs. There’s too much slow-moving and
