Dave Nelson, Chief Strategy Officer, HTC Global Services, Inc. is a former Vice President for Delphi Corporation where he led their global supply management operations encompassing 2700 supply chain professionals and $18 billion in total annual spending. Dave also served as vice president of worldwide supply management at Deere & Company in Moline, Ill.
From 1987 to 1997 Nelson served as a corporate officer of Honda America Manufacturing in Marysville, OH. Where, under Dave’s direction, the company’s purchasing division grew from 100 to 400 associates and North America purchases increased from $600 million to $6 billion.
Questions asked:
- How have the concepts of Toyota changed the world of supply management?
- What do most companies miss with respect to excellent supply management?
- Could you briefly describe the supply management system you helped develop at Honda US, and described in your book Powered by Honda?
- What indicators do you recommend we focus on to measure success and/or failure and at what frequency should we check our supply management overall system?
Thanks again, Dwight, for bring us these interesting insights from people who have achieved so much. The fascinating thing here is that, like so much we’ve learned about “lean”, the lesson here is that the breakthrough is SOCIAL – relationship and trust are the keywords I heard. Obviously the technical features are operating at a very high level, but at the end of the game, it is the organizations that learn how to work together that win.
-ALB