Vanessa EllisChief Operating Officer · Essays & perspective

Chief Operating Officer United States · Global perspective

A record of
consequential work.

On-time delivery
97.6%
Up from 81% across the network
Cost removed
₹1,150 Cr
Without reducing service quality
Sites run
64
Plants, warehouses and service centres
Safety incidents
−48%
Over three operating years

Decisions & consequences

01

Operating model redesign

An organisation had grown through local improvisation, leaving hand-offs between commercial and delivery teams unclear. I mapped the end-to-end workflow with team leaders, assigned ownership at the points where work crossed functions and established a shared escalation routine. The redesign made service commitments and capacity decisions part of the same conversation.

02

Delivery reliability

Delivery teams were responding to recurring exceptions as if each were new. We separated demand variation from avoidable process failure, reviewed the causes with frontline colleagues and gave recurring issues a named owner. The operating review shifted from reporting yesterday's misses to removing the conditions that produced them.

03

Productivity and quality

A productivity programme risked moving costs from one function to another without improving the customer outcome. I introduced end-to-end measures alongside local targets and tested changes in a contained operating unit before wider adoption. Quality, workload and service reliability remained visible throughout the decision.

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