28 DC VELOCITY JULY 2014 www.dcvelocity.com
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Dov Shenkman is a man who knows a lot
about algorithms. He recently developed
one to help manage the replenishment process for all 8,200 Walgreens stores. As group
vice president of supply chain global inventory and transportation at Walgreens, he is
responsible for distribution, full inventory management, import management, and
transportation as well as private-brand supply chains.
Before joining Walgreens last year,
Shenkman was a senior vice president of inventory management and replenishment at OfficeMax. He has over 25
years of industry and management consulting experience,
including executive positions at General Motors, i2, and
EDS-A. T. Kearney.
Q You have a broad background in the various aspects of supply chain management. How does that help you in
your role at Walgreens?
A Throughout my career, I was lucky to get exposure and experience in many different facets of supply chain,
such as manufacturing, retail, and business-to-business
(B2B) as well as business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce.
This wide range of experience enabled me to have a broad
understanding of a complex value chain like Walgreens’
and facilitate the translation of customer requirements to
all its components.
Q You have developed an algorithm for delivery frequen- cy based on maximizing economic profit. What does
that entail?
A One of the key challenges in every sup- ply chain is to find a balance between
conflicting goals such as service level, working capital, and cost. We developed a methodology to facilitate and optimize the decision process around store delivery frequency
that balanced the conflicting objectives and
optimized enterprise economic profit.
Q What do you consider to be your greatest professional accomplishment to date?
A There are many achievements I am proud of in my career, but the greatest would be the people and the
teams that I have had the opportunity to work with and the
incredible results we were able to achieve.
Q What do you consider to be the biggest obstacle to greater supply chain optimization?
A The greatest obstacle is cross-functional and cross-en- terprise collaboration. As simple as it sounds, it is
very challenging to overcome on a consistent and repeatable basis. Collaboration also represents one of the largest
opportunities many value chains have.
Q What advice would you give a young person about to embark on a career in supply chain management?
A You are entering a great journey and adventure. Many new factors such as technological development,
environmental responsibility, changing consumer requirements, globalization, and omnichannel will require continuous evolution and will drive change. Lead the change; do
not resist or adapt to it!
Dov Shenkman
Phil Davis did not begin his career in supply chain management. Instead, like many
of his peers at the supermarket chain The
Kroger Co., he started out working in the
store itself. After about 26 years at the
company, however, he moved into the supply chain. Now senior fresh supply chain
manager, Davis has also held positions in
produce procurement/merchandising, floral
distribution, and perishable transportation.
That early experience in the store deeply
influenced how Davis views supply chain management.
Rather than regarding it as a back-office function focused
on cost control, he believes the supply chain begins with
the customer and should be focused first and foremost on
making the customer’s shopping experience better.
This perspective helps explain how Davis became
involved in one of his favorite causes: the
use of reusable plastic containers (RPCs)
for shipping. Davis’s interest in RPCs was
sparked by a simple question: Why is a lot
of the product arriving at our stores dam-
aged? As he dug into the problem, he found
that the corrugated boxes that Kroger had
been using to transport fresh produce were
absorbing moisture in their 34-degree ship-
ping environment and becoming unstable.
From the start, Davis realized that shifting
to the sturdier RPCs would require buy-in from the end-to-
end supply chain. Externally, the company reached out to
growers to make sure the RPC program resulted in sustain-
able benefits for them (increased sales of their produce).
Internally, Davis and his team worked across department
lines to help the company’s distribution centers understand
Phillip W. Davis
