Across the schedule, the contract and the business

Mandate

Retain customer responsiveness while recording and funding the obligations previously managed through founder relationships.

Outcomes

• Reconciled sixteen of twenty-one incomplete customer-tooling files, retaining five open cases.
• Agreed explicit reservation economics for a dedicated-capacity programme.
• Funded eighteen setter-development places with thirteen demonstrated qualifications.

Decisions in context

The board hired me to make a capable manufacturing company less dependent on personal arrangements that only a few people could explain. I began with specific obligations rather than a programme to standardise every customer. Tooling records, reserved capacity and setter development each revealed a different form of dependence. My task was to decide what the company would fund and what it would ask customers or colleagues to clarify. I retained the commercial team’s knowledge of relationships while requiring unresolved assumptions to remain visible. The seven executives reporting to me own their functions; I am responsible for how their commitments fit together and for the consolidated result. Joining from outside also required restraint. I could question a practice without assuming that its history was irrational, and I needed evidence before replacing an arrangement that had served the company well.

Reason for the move

Recruited externally during founder succession; remains the group chief executive.

Mandate

Coordinate customer programmes and supplier dependencies across an assembly business with several sources of critical components.

Outcomes

• Connected programme reviews with materials and working-instruction changes.
• Required proposed commercial exceptions to identify their operating consequences.
• Developed functional managers who could explain dependencies beyond their own department.

Decisions in context

Cadrivane was my first appointment with responsibility for the entire business result. Purchased components and internal production met in an assembly sequence that could not be understood through either supply or factory measures alone. I spent time with programme managers who could trace a customer change into the documents and material decisions used by several organisations. That became a practical test of whether we understood an obligation before accepting it. I had to resolve disagreements that I might previously have referred to another function, including the cost of accommodating a late change. The board expected a commercial answer supported by operating evidence. Working in Malaysia also broadened my understanding of regional manufacturing relationships without making me an expert in every local requirement. The experience made an external chief executive appointment credible, while leaving much to learn about Selvarune’s own history.

Reason for the move

Accepted the Selvarune board’s invitation to lead the company after founder succession.

Mandate

Negotiate customer programmes with a clear account of tooling, revisions and the capacity required to supply them.

Outcomes

• Separated part-price discussions from dedicated-capacity obligations.
• Brought programme-end tooling arrangements into commercial reviews.
• Required operations input before accepting unusual engineering-change commitments.

Decisions in context

Commercial leadership changed the way I judged the promises that reached a production planner. Customers had legitimate reasons for wanting flexibility, and a supplier needed an alternative that could survive comparison with competitors. I learnt to explain why a requested arrangement cost money without treating the customer’s need as unreasonable. Our team began discussing tooling and programme-end responsibilities before the unit price became the only subject left to negotiate. I owned the sales remit and customer-programme coordination, but major capital and company-level commitments still required the managing director’s approval. The role also made me accountable for the cost of a slower or lost negotiation when we asked for greater clarity. I wanted to know whether the discipline would hold when I also owned the factory and financial result, which led to the general-manager move in 2013.

Reason for the move

Moved to Cadrivane to take whole-business responsibility rather than remain within the commercial function.

Mandate

Coordinate materials and schedules while preserving the distinction between forecast demand and firm customer commitments.

Outcomes

• Recorded the source and status of demand signals in planning reviews.
• Identified material reservations resting on unconfirmed programme assumptions.
• Connected scheduling exceptions with the colleagues authorised to resolve them.

Decisions in context

The planning-manager role showed me how quickly an uncertain signal could become a fixed expectation. A customer indication entered a spreadsheet, supported a materials decision and then appeared in a capacity review as if an order had been received. My team needed to plan ahead, so the answer could not be to wait for certainty. I asked colleagues to retain the source and status of each important assumption and identify the decision made against it. That made a revision easier to discuss before it became a crisis. I controlled the planning function’s expense within approved limits; I did not have unrestricted authority to buy inventory or bind the company to customer terms. More frequent discussions with commercial colleagues exposed the negotiation behind those signals and prepared me for the later move into that function.

Reason for the move

Promoted into commercial leadership after increasing involvement in customer-programme discussions.

Mandate

Prepare schedules that reflected material, tooling and machine-readiness constraints.

Outcomes

• Recorded setup qualifications that were absent from simple machine-hour estimates.
• Escalated drawing and tool-readiness mismatches before allocating dependent work.
• Maintained schedule notes that distinguished confirmed availability from expectation.

Decisions in context

I began by trying to make the production schedule internally consistent. Experienced colleagues taught me to ask whether it was consistent with the shop. A difficult setup could depend on one setter, and an apparently available tool could carry a revision question that I had no authority to resolve. I learnt to record those conditions and refer them to the person who could decide, rather than make the dates look achievable through an assumption. The role gave me no commercial or investment power. Its value was the opportunity to see how decisions made elsewhere arrived at a machine and affected the next job. I also learnt to explain a scheduling problem without blaming the colleague who had reported it. That habit became more important when I later managed planners who needed to bring inconvenient facts into an operating meeting.

Reason for the move

Promoted to supply planning manager as the company expanded its programme workload.