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Give us an overview of your career history and how you came to be in your current position. I’ m an engineer by training, but I‘ cut my teeth’ in operational management roles with Novartis, where I ran efficiency projects on packaging lines and helped set up a new distribution center in Istanbul, Türkiye. In 2008, I joined Kearney and never looked back. Over the past 17 years, I’ ve focused on helping clients optimize their end-to-end supply chains, and today, I help many navigate the challenges of the current geopolitical climate.
Can you provide an overview of Kearney’ s operations? We’ re trusted advisors to business leaders, driving operational excellence and impact. We blend hands-on industry experience with deep supply chain expertise, digital transformation insights, and an understanding of the shifting geopolitical landscape. Our clients call us‘ results’ consultants because we focus on solving complex operational challenges. Whether it’ s cost management, service, or leveraging digital technologies, we help businesses optimize their supply chains from end-to-end planning, sourcing, production, and distribution.
How are you seeing supply chains evolve in terms of nearshoring and reshoring? Nearshoring and reshoring have been discussed in depth for over 20 years, but the Covid-19 pandemic and recent macroeconomic challenges have really brought them up the agenda for the C-suite. It’ s rarely as simple as it seems. The idea of shortening supply chains to reduce risk often overlooks the complexity of global networks, such as with semiconductor production.
Typically, nearshoring therefore results in decoupled supply chains, where only assembly moves closer to the market and value-add stays upstream. However, with rising supply chain risks and a more fragmented world, nearshoring and reshoring are becoming key strategies in reconfiguring supply chains. This move to the‘ reindustrialization’ of nations that have for decades relied heavily on imported goods from overseas means it’ s essential that we find new ways to square these traditional challenges.
What about automation, AI, and digital infrastructure – how can these technologies help strengthen supply chains? This ties closely back to the previous point. In many developed economies, the
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