Dean Krueger is an accomplished Procurement and Supply Chain professional with over 20 years’ progressive experience in the consumer packaged goods and retail industries. His experience encompasses a proven cross functional track record for leading successful teams, network optimization and delivering sustainable results in demanding environments. Dean is currently employed at Staples as Director Global Sourcing with direct team responsibility for the Supply Chain, Real Estate Facilities and Copy & Print buying categories across US and Canada. Prior to his current role at Staples, he was Procurement Leader for the manufacturing equipment and supplies team at Kraft Foods Group, supporting key business leaders and 38 manufacturing locations across North America.
You will be hosting a roundtable lunch discussion entitled, “Optimizing Your Organization’s Regional, National, and International Footprints” at the North American Supply Chain Executive Summit in Chicago this September. Why do you want to have a conversation around that topic?
I think it’s a common challenge that all organizations are trying to solve for. I think in my current role and in my prior role, this was there. This was one of the obstacles I face and faced. The way I plan to approach the topic is I want to do a round of introductions to see who is at the table and what is their backgrounds, and then I want to explore on an informal basis what variables did they want to discuss. Understanding the scope, the organizational structure, the business requirements, and the uniqueness of the geography. I think it’s a great topic and very relevant.
Who do you hope will sign up to discuss this with you over lunch? What sort of job titles from what sort of organizations?
I think the people that I would want at the table will be a mix of both procurement and supply chain operational leadership folks with a broad range of responsibilities across geographies. In terms of title, director or VP or even EVP.
When you talk about regional, national, and international footprints, there are often major organizational and cultural differences from place to place. Is that one of the areas you plan to discuss? When you are thinking about optimization, what are you looking to talk about?
I believe there has to be a foundation in place for you to even consider this topic within an organization. You hit on one of the items that is critical to be successful, which is the organizational aspect of it. You need to make sure you have the proper alignment. The other thing is you have to provide a solution that suits the company’s interests while making your operation as efficient as possible.
There’s a lot of little challenges. As a side note, when I was working at Kraft under
Philippe Lambotte. He’s at Mattel now. Anyway, we did a 59-site mega-bid on 3PL warehousing. This topic really focuses on the challenges we had there. We had never done that before, so I have firsthand experience of trying to do this from a sourcing point of view, but I also saw the organizational challenges as well.
How do you see your conversation working?
I want it to be a collaborative discussion. I might bring up some of my prior experiences and challenges that I’ve had firsthand, but I don’t want to have a business case example that I just walk through. I want to go around the table and give everyone a chance to contribute.
