36 DC VELOCITY JULY 2016 www.dcvelocity.com
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Sue Armstrong, chief operating officer of
Nature’s Sunshine Products, is known for
her ability to create order out of complexity by applying Lean principles to supply
chain management.
Armstrong’s career has included several leadership roles in supply chain
and logistics management. At Nature’s
Sunshine Products, a manufacturer and
marketer of natural health supplements,
Armstrong is responsible for worldwide sourcing, manufacturing, distribution, and information technology.
Before that, she served as senior vice president, value
chain, for Metagenics, a nutritional supplement company, and vice president, global supply chain at Carl Zeiss
Vision, a provider of ophthalmic lenses and eye care
solutions.
Nature’s Sunshine operates a complex supply chain.
It serves 43 international markets, has over 4,000 forecasted stock-keeping units and 900-plus raw material
ingredients, and sources from over 250 vendors. Within
this environment, Armstrong has developed a Lean culture. The focus on Lean has improved the company’s
processing yields, scorecard methodology, manufacturing throughput, business unit collaboration, vendor
performance, sales and operations planning, and overall
cost savings.
Armstrong is dedicated to sharing her knowledge with
others. She is a frequent presenter at industry events, a
member of the advisory board to the Brigham Young
University (BYU) global supply chain faculty, and a
coach and adviser to students of the BYU global supply
chain program.
Q What is your proudest professional achievement?
A I have many aspects of my career to date to be proud of, and I am thankful to my mentors, coach-
es, and teams that I have worked with. I have enjoyed
and relished every role that I have had
the privilege to hold. Being promoted to
COO of Nature’s Sunshine Products was
a very proud achievement for me, as I
believe the challenges we have faced and
the successes we have achieved have been
made possible because of my learnings
and experiences over my 30-year career.
I also have a world-class team—we have
worked together to create a collaborative,
high-energy, and successful team.
Q I understand you have a strong commitment to Lean and developing a Lean culture at Nature’s
Sunshine Products. What are some of the benefits that
you have seen of applying Lean thinking?
A Lean is so much more than a toolset for improve- ment; it is a way of “being.” We have worked hard
at Nature’s Sunshine Products to develop a Lean culture,
training to date over 80 people at all levels of the orga-
nization in Lean principles, techniques, and tools. We
use the Arbinger Institute’s book Leadership and Self
Deception as reading material for the training. Having
the reading material as a key part of the training is
fundamental to how we are developing the culture. We
have seen significant improvements in many aspects of
our Balanced Scorecard KPI [key performance indica-
tor] performance (costs, customer service etc.) through
focused activities in our “top 10 projects” and A3 meth-
odology. [A3 is a structured problem-solving and con-
tinuous improvement technique.]
We have seen a huge change in our people. I am so
proud of people at all levels of the organization, from
operators to the director level. We have open commu-
nication, cross-functional project teams, many internal
promotions, biweekly A3 project reports, and meetings
where all levels of the organization report on the prog-
ress of their projects.
Sue Armstrong
deployment of new technology and the assurance that we
are executing with state-of-the-art systems and processes
globally. This also frees our local teams on the ground to
focus on working with the commercial team in driving
supply chain initiatives with our customers and improving the planning of our activities in the market.
Q Can you tell us a little bit about your work as a member of the University of Tennessee’s Global
Supply Chain Institute Advisory Board?
A I believe that the partnership of academia and busi- ness is very valuable. The University of Tennessee
wants to make sure that it is aligned with the needs of
the organizations that will hire its alumni and that the
research it pursues is providing value to the business
community. My role is to provide the business perspective so that the curriculum is forming the type of professionals the supply chain needs today and tomorrow, and
also that the research the Global Supply Chain Institute
is working on is aligned with our needs.
