DC Velocity - July 2018

34 DC VELOCITY JULY 2018 www.dcvelocity.com t h ou g ht l e ad er s

As the senior vice president and chief supply chain officer of La-Z-Boy Inc., Darrell Edwards leads an operations team of 5,500 employees. Since joining the 91-year-old reclining chair and furniture manufacturer and retailer in 2004, Edwards has created the company’s Supply Chain Operational Excellence (SCOE) initiative, realigning every component of La-Z-Boy’s supply chain strategy and forging new ways to work with suppliers. He was also one of the lead executives who implemented “cellular” production—a type of lean manufacturing—across La-Z-Boy’s branded manufacturing facilities, which reduced costs and increased production speed and quality.

Edwards is on the advisory board for the Global Supply Chain Institute at the University of Tennessee and is a member of the Michigan State University Supply Chain Management Council.

Q What’s your proudest professional achievement, and why? A I am most proud of the supply chain teams I’ve had the chance to help build, assemble, and lead. Regardless of the situations they inherited, either performing well or not, I was pleased at how they worked together collectively to achieve the goals of the business and worked diligently to leave it better than they found it.

Q What drew you to the field of logistics?

A I began my career in supply chain as a young person, really not knowing what I wanted to do specifically, but I knew I enjoyed competition and I knew I liked being part of a team. Through serendipity, my first “real job” was in manufacturing, and as my responsibilities expanded, I began to see that all of the things I wanted most in a career were really found within the global supply chain. Now, I find myself working for a great company and being part of a fantastic team, where we compete on a global stage, and—oh, by the way—I get to travel the world.

Q What are some of the biggest changes you’ve seen during your career? A There have been a few seismic trends within business in general, and clearly logistics and the greater supply chain haven’t been immune to them. First, the speed of business has increased tremendously; producers have never been asked to produce faster.

Additionally, technology integration within practically every market sector has enabled this incredible market responsiveness. Along the same theme, customer expectations are greater than ever before; speed of delivery, quality of products, and price competitiveness are all part of the customer equation. Never before have I seen a more informed and savvy customer.

As business leaders, we must be equally informed and savvy if we are to compete and serve our customers well.

One of the last big changes I’ve seen is that conventionally held paradigms are now being broken more frequently and faster than ever before. When I started my career in supply chain, I never envisioned people buying large consumer goods like cars on the Internet, or customer orders being taken and delivered within hours, or artificial intelligence (AI) being integrated into our daily business lives. Today’s supply chain is clearly not the supply chain I grew up with.

Q What are some of the truisms that should be for- gotten? In other words, what rules do companies need to break?

A Every day, companies are “breaking the rules”; those are the disrupters, and some of them may emerge as future market leaders in their segments. With that said, one of the old rules that’s sometimes worth breaking is the notion that you always have to play it safe. It’s OK to take a few more risks—not “bet the farm” risks but incremental risks—and when that is done more frequently, it can have a compounding and cumulative effect. Even when we fail, we still learn. I tend to believe moderate risk-taking is a skill that can be refined, and more times than not, creates value.

Q What advice would you give someone just start- ing a career in supply chain management? A First, I would say congratulations … you’ve cho- sen an amazingly exciting and rewarding profession. Very few business careers will be more impactful to the organization than that of the supply chain; you are now a part of the central nervous system of the business. With that said, I would suggest a young supply chain leader build partnerships both inside the business and outside the business. This will always pay dividends. And become a lifelong learner. Never, ever stop learning. You will never find a better investment than investing in yourself.