Advisory Director — Network Performance Renewal

Advising on automation in a plant network

Automation proposals in manufacturing are usually persuasive. A robotic cell promises cycle-time gains, a manufacturing execution system promises visibility, a vision system promises fewer escapes. Each is assessed on its own merits, and each assumes that the process it automates is stable and owned. Very often it is neither. Practice varies from shift to shift and from plant to plant, and nobody can say who decides how the work should be done. Automating such a process freezes its inconsistencies and makes them more expensive to fix.

The Advisory Director gives counsel to the Country Managing Director on getting that order right over 24 months. You will not take the decisions; you will make sure the people who do take them have asked the right questions first. You will help leadership set how operating decisions are structured and record the thresholds held locally. You will advise on the evidence for governing capital, capacity and the controls around them across countries, recommend which commitments go on, pause or end and the order in which automation is introduced, and challenge operations proposals that pass on cost or risk without anyone accountable, along with investment cases that say nothing of adoption, dependencies or what could go wrong. You will counsel on who should lead which plants and how problems rise, and help the Country Managing Director and plant heads resolve disagreements.

The adviser who does this well spends time on the shop floor as well as in the boardroom. Advice about process ownership is only credible if it reflects how the work is actually done on a night shift, not how the procedure says it is done.

Your knowledge of industrial manufacturing comes from decisions that were yours, including at least one commitment without real backing that you halted before it did damage. Your record comes from organisations with at least $670 million in revenue and 2,000 people across six or more countries, and it runs through regulatory remediation, a joint venture and a turnaround. The seat asks for operating cadence at level 4, and operating model, network footprint and quality and safety at level 3. You can name a well-liked commitment you closed, the reasons you closed it and what the freed capacity was used for.

What the advice should achieve by month 24

Within the first ninety days your advice on process ownership across sites should be agreed, setting the preconditions any automation step must meet. Around month nine the automation proposals should have been reviewed for adoption, dependencies and downside, with leadership advised on which to proceed with and which to defer. By month 24 the automation sequence and process ownership should have been reviewed against network performance, and the renewal approach endorsed by leadership.

Before the first conversation

If advising that a commitment stop would, for you, require every country head to agree, or you want influence while leaving the 24 months of accountability to others, this seat will not suit you. The Country Managing Director begins the process with a private call on video during week one. The Regional President then works through a problem with you in week three. A panel of executives, each leading a different function, sees you face to face in week five; week seven is a session with the full board. We will send our view in writing within five working days of each stage.