Senior Manager Inventory & Deployment Excellence

Purpose & Overall Relevance for the Organization:

Manage and deliver mid-scale supply chain projects or sub-elements of larger-scale projects on a local or global level within the boundaries of time, cost, and quality while focusing on the customers' expectations and requirements. This role is particularly focused on driving projects and initiatives to bring process excellence in the supply chain of Greater China, with a specific emphasis on inventory management and inventory deployment for both offline and online channels. Additionally, this role supports the implementation of market and global process standards and drives continuous improvement initiatives across SCM Teams.

Key Responsibilities:

Project Planning

• Coordinate and manage initiative development, planning, and prioritization processes across functions, with a particular focus on inventory management and deployment.
• Engage with senior management to identify initiative owners and core team members.
• Drive, guide, and consult initiative owners to set initiative objectives, develop detailed plans, and define KPIs related to inventory excellence.
• Ensure project objectives are aligned with the strategic direction of the organization, especially in terms of inventory optimization.

Project Management / Support / Communications

• Lead and manage the successful delivery of assigned global and cross-functional projects, end-to-end, ideally through applying project management with a standardized methodology effectively.
• Ensure full understanding of project scope to design detailed project plans, particularly those impacting inventory management and deployment.
• Manage the execution and completion of the defined project plan through effectively coordinating people and resources, with a focus on inventory-related initiatives.
• Drive and measure engagement reviews and quality assurance procedures to ensure KPIs related to inventory management are met.
• Manage the change management approach for respective projects and ensure changes are smoothly and successfully implemented to achieve lasting benefits in inventory processes.
• Finalize all activities across the projects/programs to formally close and hand over the project, ensuring project documents are approved, completed, maintained, and stored appropriately.
• Work with initiative owners to build high-quality and constructive project updates for management review, with a focus on inventory metrics.
• Act as a liaison and communication bridge across the organization to build alignment on initiative direction and priorities, and to manage cross-initiative interdependencies, especially those affecting inventory.
• Proactively share best practices and escalate any potential issues, risks, and new opportunities identified in inventory management and deployment.

Systems and Processes

• Provide active process management and value-added analysis – typically focused on initiatives that require:
  • New or custom process development
  • Ad-hoc data analysis and insight
  • Heavy cross-functional alignment and management
• Prepare regular updates to senior management on overall initiative progress.
• Identify opportunities for business process improvements, including opportunities to support business growth. Influence stakeholders to ensure alignment of goals and then directly contribute to the execution of the solutions where appropriate.
• Coordinate with Human Resources on initiative KPI and performance evaluation.

People Management

• Provide advice and feedback to initiative owners and core members to ensure high quality, timely execution.
• Act as a communication bridge across the organization to build alignment on initiative direction and priorities, and proactively escalate any potential issues, risks, and new opportunities identified.

Key Relationships:

• Internal: Warehouse Planning, OBF, Inbound Logistics, PO, HR/Admin, IT, Finance, SCI/LO/factories, BP&O, CSD, Own Retail, global Operations/CoE Logistics, other global functions.
• External: Customers, 3PL, vendors.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Strong process and project management skills – organized approach but also able to be flexible to meet changing needs.
• Solid business sense and analytic/critical-thinking skills – able to solve problems using both conventional judgment and ad-hoc analysis.
• Strategic thinking and problem solving.
• Team leadership – able to lead and influence project teams across different functions towards a common objective.
• Ability to handle multiple projects across various topics at the same time.