Confidential mandate
Board Logistics Automation Adviser — Third-Party Logistics
Planned Hiring / New
A diversified 3PL seeks board guidance on warehouse automation choices after initial pilots produced throughput gains but uncertain utilisation, systems integration cost and customer payback.
The mandate
The board cannot yet answer which warehouse processes deserve fixed automation when customer contracts, volumes and product profiles change faster than asset lives. Pilot success has been measured at station level rather than across labour, exceptions and utilisation.
Two days a month cover an engineering-economics review and Operations Committee participation; one quarterly site walkthrough is included within those days. Complete vendor or capital papers receive a response within four business days.
The ten-month term runs through approval of the automation portfolio and first post-investment review. A two-month extension may be agreed by the committee chair; the adviser has no line authority, procurement power, project-director duty or executive responsibility.
Three simultaneous appointments are allowed outside direct 3PL competitors. Equipment makers, integrators, warehouse-software firms and customers offering the adviser compensation must be disclosed, and bid-related success fees are prohibited.
Why the board wants this voice
Engineering champions capability, sites focus on labour availability, and commercial teams promise bespoke solutions. The committee needs a practitioner who can connect variability and contract tenure to asset economics. That view is absent from its current membership.
What you will own
- Test automation cases against SKU variability, exception rates, ramp curves and contract duration.
- Challenge throughput claims that exclude replenishment, quality, maintenance or downstream congestion.
- Press management to value modularity, redeployment and exit cost alongside nominal payback.
- Shape criteria for goods-to-person, sortation, autonomous movement and conventional mechanisation choices.
- Examine customer pricing and change-control terms needed to protect investment returns.
- Guide scrutiny of controls, spares, skills and software integration after vendor handover.
- Advise which pilots have earned scale and which should be retired.
Candidate qualifications
- 22–28 years in logistics, warehouse engineering or automation leadership at COO or director level.
- Direct oversight of multiple automation deployments across materially different operating profiles.
- Evidence of measuring end-to-end productivity and asset utilisation after stabilisation.
- Experience negotiating customer economics and supplier performance for capital-intensive solutions.
- Technical literacy across warehouse control, material flow, maintenance and safety.
- No commercial dependence on bidding equipment or integration firms.
Non-negotiables
- Two Chennai days each month, including agreed quarterly site walkthroughs.
- No vendor referral, reseller or success-fee arrangement.
- Full disclosure of 3PL, customer, equipment and integrator interests.
- Four-business-day turnaround on complete capital-decision packs.
- 49 words maximum. Which warehouse automation investment did you stop, resize or scale, and what utilisation evidence drove that advice?
- 49 words maximum. Which 3PL, equipment, software or integration relationships could affect your independence?
- 49 words maximum. Can you commit two monthly days, including quarterly site walkthroughs, for ten months?
This mandate is confidential. The client is named only under a mutual NDA, and your own record is never listed, sold or shown to a company under your name until you release it for this specific mandate.