By Gene Carmichael, SCMA VP of IT & Finance, MBA Class of 2013
On Thursday, November 15th, the SCMA had the pleasure of welcoming Donna Warton to spend two hours with our members in an introduction to Dell’s supply chain operations.
Donna joined Dell Inc. in 2009 and is currently Vice President of Global Operations Planning. Her responsibilities cover Global Operations Planning and Supply Chain Performance Management. Her focus at Dell is to enable best in class Sales & Operations planning while executing Dell’s segmented supply chains that align to what customer’s value and optimize operations performance. Since joining Dell, Donna has led the S&OP planning transformation which has significantly improved customer lead times and delivery performance while reducing operations cost.
Before joining Dell, Donna was Head of Global Supply Chain for Mettler-Toledo International, a $2 billion precision balance and scale manufacturer for laboratory, retail & industrial markets. And prior to Mettler-Toledo, Donna spent 16 years at Motorola, where her last role was Corporate Vice President of Global Operations and Supply Chain for Motorola’s Mobile Devices business.
During the session, Donna provided a detailed description of Dell’s current operations, as well as explaining the current industry standards and trends. Our members were actively engaging and brought up questions regarding the trade-offs of some of Dell’s decisions, as well as how Dell compares to its competitors and how it is preparing itself toward the future. Donna was very accommodating in answering all the questions to the best of her ability and she was very cordial in providing feedback to members who will be working as either interns or full-time employees at Dell in the upcoming year.
This was a very successful event as members showed great interest in hearing an industry expert to discuss at length the intricacies of creating and maintaining a supply chain operation, and we hope to introduce more experts to our members in the upcoming year.