Inventory Obsolescence and Standard-Cost Reset Director

The mandate

The Interim Director will reset two connected accounting disciplines: how standard costs are established and how obsolescence estimates respond when actual evidence diverges from those assumptions. The assignment covers diagnosis, correction, controlled refresh and successor handover. It does not direct inventory operations, production planning, sourcing or commercial pricing.

During the first month, the Director will compare approved standards with actual cost evidence, analyse material variance patterns and test obsolescence populations against ageing, movement and item-specific facts. Authority includes requiring source support, suspending unsupported accounting adjustments and convening estimation reviews. The Corporate Controller approves material policy and correction conclusions.

The recovery must avoid compensating errors. An inflated standard cannot be balanced through an arbitrary provision, and a mechanical ageing rule cannot override credible contrary evidence. Each correction will state the source fact, accounting rationale, period effect and control owner. Historical weakness will be prioritised by current reporting consequence rather than reconstructed without limit.

By month four, the highest-risk standard and provision issues should be corrected and new refresh protocols should operate. Two later reporting cycles will test variance investigation, evidence-based obsolescence review and movement reconciliation. A nominated internal owner must identify a seeded assumption and classification error during reverse-shadow assessment.

Exit requires accepted costing and provision protocols, correction register, inventory movement bridge, open-risk schedule and owner-readiness record. Systems change, physical-count management, supply decisions, tax and permanent team design are out of scope. Extension is conditional on a genuine proof-cycle delay, not residual cleanup volume.

Handover is accepted only after the internal owner completes a full review cycle, detects the seeded exception and presents the corrective decision without interim direction.

What you will own

• Compare standards with current purchase, conversion and allocation evidence and identify materially stale assumptions.
• Classify variances by cause, accounting treatment, investigation threshold, owner and close disposition.
• Build an obsolescence framework combining ageing, demand, movement, condition and item-specific contrary evidence.
• Prevent unsupported offsetting between costing errors and provisions through separate movement analysis.
• Correct approved issues with traceable period, comparative and disclosure assessment.
• Prove refresh and review controls across two cycles using clear evidence and exception thresholds.
• Train and test an internal owner on standard refresh, variance challenge and estimation judgment.
• Keep inventory operations, planning, pricing, physical counts and system implementation outside scope.

Candidate qualifications

• Demonstrate interim correction of standard-cost and obsolescence accounting in the same reporting environment.
• Describe a provision that masked a flawed cost basis and how you separated the effects.
• Show how actual variance evidence changed a standard refresh decision.
• Evidence use of item-specific contrary information within a portfolio estimation method.
• Provide a historical-data remediation boundary that focused effort on current financial consequence.
• Quantify improvement in variance explanation, provision evidence or post-close correction.
• Show an internal owner detecting a designed exception without your direction.

Working terms and boundaries

• The ten-month assignment is five days weekly and includes diagnosis, correction, two proofs and transfer.
• The Interim Director controls accounting remediation but not operational inventory or commercial decisions.
• Day rates include on-site work and ordinary close intensity; exceptional travel requires approval.
• Systems implementation, physical counts, production planning, sourcing, pricing and tax are excluded.
• Extension is capped at two months and requires a delayed documented owner-proof cycle.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 6 October 2026. Mandate reference FNA-INT-2026-HEL-42.