About
Operator to orchestrator.
Tier-1 global practice, translated for mid-size domestic manufacturers. That translation is the whole job.
I have spent over a decade in manufacturing procurement inside a $2B NYSE-listed global manufacturer, carrying a nine-figure direct-materials and contract-manufacturing portfolio, after three years in commercial operations before that.
The work started close enough to the line to see how a specification becomes a cost. That proximity never left. It is why I open a cost model before opening a negotiation, and why I distrust savings numbers that cannot be traced to a physical change in how something is made or moved.
The global work is where the standard gets set. Tier-1 contract manufacturers run disciplines that mid-size shops have usually never been shown: real should-cost models, consignment structures priced properly, tooling ownership tracked as an asset, supplier scorecards with consequences attached, and program governance that survives a site transfer.
The domestic work is where that standard actually pays. Mid-size US manufacturers, family-held fabricators, molders and machine shops, the kind of partner where you know the owner’s name and the plant manager takes your call. They rarely have a procurement function that has seen Tier-1 practice, and they gain the most from it. Carrying those disciplines down to that level, without the bureaucracy that usually comes attached, is the work I am proudest of.
The middle of the arc was scale: global categories, an Asia reshoring program, tariff exposure mapped and engineered down through Section 301 and IEEPA work, and a savings line that had to survive into the P&L rather than into a slide. Then a Center of Excellence, where the job stopped being my own results and became everyone else’s method.
That is where the current work began. Running a category at scale, you notice how much senior judgment is spent on retrieval. So I started building systems to carry that load: agentic workflows over procurement data, with a human still making the decision.
The arc
Hands on, then higher up, then hands on again.
Not a ladder. The same question asked from different heights: where is the work being done by people that should be done by a system?
Tap any point below to see what it looked like.
What this looked like
- Watched a bill of materials turn into a physical product, and learned how far a spreadsheet sits from the line.
- Saw that most price problems are actually specification, tooling, or scheduling problems wearing a price costume.
- Built the habit that still drives the work: go look at where the part is made before negotiating what it costs.
What this looked like
- Carried electromechanical direct-material categories: sourcing, negotiation, supplier performance, and cost.
- Ran should-cost and cost-waterfall models down to raw material, fabrication labour, and freight.
- Held annual savings accountability rather than a sourcing-event target. The number had to survive into the P&L.
What this looked like
- Global category ownership of a nine-figure direct-materials and contract-manufacturing portfolio.
- Consignment and cost-model design: deciding who buys the raw material, who carries it, and how conversion is priced.
- Supplier governance: QBR cadence, tooling asset control, quality escalation, and exit management.
- Worked across SAP Ariba, Epicor, NetSuite, and Snowflake rather than around them.
What this looked like
- Led a contract-manufacturing reshore out of China into Thailand, protecting the revenue that depended on it.
- Qualified new sites and moved tooling while holding continuity of supply through the transition rather than after it.
- Mapped and engineered down Section 301 and IEEPA tariff exposure across a direct-materials portfolio.
- Kept the outgoing partners whole on the way out. A supplier you exit badly is a supplier who talks.
What this looked like
- Stood up procurement Center of Excellence and PMO structure: method, cadence, and reporting rather than heroics.
- Replaced recurring arguments with decision policy: thresholds that route a call to procurement and surface only exceptions to leadership.
- Built the reporting spine that let leadership see status without asking three people for a spreadsheet.
- This is where Find the Friction came from. The three themes it looks for, every time, are below.
Retrieval · The wait · The re-argument
Find the Friction →
What this looked like
- Designed agentic workflows over procurement data: goods receipt, part status, and cost inputs feeding a warehouse instead of a mailbox.
- Built approval-gated automation: the agent prepares and evidences the decision, a human still makes it.
- Learned the hard constraint of this work: agents fail on weak data foundations long before they fail on reasoning.
- That constraint is why AI-readiness is a data and process engagement here, not a model engagement.
- MBA, Information Systems and International Business, University of Connecticut. BS, Villanova University.
- Hands-on across SAP Ariba, Epicor, NetSuite, Snowflake, and the Microsoft stack.
Want the working version of this?
How I work sets out the range, from a little help to building it properly.