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The LeanDNA-List celebrates the hard work of our customers who strive to see the benefits of inventory optimization, reduce shortages, and empower their organizations with supply chain automation to operate more efficiently.

"Tony is an absolute pleasure to work with—his positivity and commitment to creating value for his team are inspiring. He works hard to bridge the gap between his front-line teams and the executives at ECI, ensuring alignment and growth across the organization. Our implementation and work with ECI have been seamless because of Tony’s commitment and drive to improve procurement operations, through both inventory optimization and shortage reduction efforts."

Nominator Adam Baker, Customer Success Manager, LeanDNA

Tony Gonzalez, the global lean supply chain manager at Electrical Components International (ECI), continuously leads his team to lasting results. With two initiatives—an Inventory Attack Team to accelerate critical inventory action completion and a Shortage Attack Team to prioritize and focus on avoiding critical shortages—his team has stayed aligned and productive, completing twice as many fixed inventory actions compared with the weeks prior and reducing critical shortages an average 30 percent across their sites in the first six months.

As ECI—the global leader in manufacturing wire harnesses, subassemblies, and value-added assemblies—grows swiftly through acquisitions and organic acceleration, Tony’s mission is to keep people, processes, and systems standardized, productive, and delivering value to their customers. “The current times demand that we be more agile than ever,” Tony says of his initiatives today. “Ultimately, LeanDNA is helping us deliver the right parts to our customers in a timely manner.”

Organization-wide standardization is an ongoing process, says Tony, but progress can still be made in the meantime, illustrated by the two initiatives Tony has led with LeanDNA by his side. First, he formed an Inventory Attack Team—an initiative deployed to drive coordinated action toward inventory optimization goals. Tony and ECI’s team of buyers use advanced analytics to focus daily on the most impactful inventory actions. The result of this work? In the first two weeks of the initiative, buyers fixed more than twice the number of inventory actions than in the previous two weeks.

Tony’s commitment doesn’t stop at inventory reduction. In addition to massive improvements he’s made so far, Tony has also committed to reduce all shortages and avoid shortage production halts—a huge undertaking considering this mass-volume producing manufacturer has 3,000 operators and up to 500 people on just one of their production lines. In the true spirit of agile work and small improvements, Tony utilizes LeanDNA’s Shortage Attack Team process to automatically prioritize shortages for his team and view progress from a “control tower.” This not only aligns his team to stay productive and execute on time, but also led to a 30 percent critical shortage reduction in the first six months.

“It’s quite a big effort to develop a standard method for reading data and executing on a data-driven truth. LeanDNA shows us the internal opportunities to correct processes that no one can see. We’ve been struggling to standardize and align every factory, and LeanDNA gives us the entire picture of data, inventory, and trends across the organization, even working to bridge the gap between executives and frontlines.” 

Tony Gonzalez, Global Lean Supply Manager, Electrical Components International

Today more than ever, the only thing consistent in the supply chain is change. While Tony’s leadership frees up resources and working capital for ECI to continue innovating, it also prevents critical shortages that may affect their customer on-time delivery. Tony’s work to establish a control tower for all performance metrics adds total visibility and standardization in his organization—the pivotal foundation for a supply chain built to last.

To learn more about building an Inventory or Shortage Attack Team in your organization, reach out to the LeanDNA team.

Know an A-lister at your company? Nominate them here!

Understanding the inventory management maturity curve can help you achieve your inventory optimization goals. 

The inventory management maturity curve has 5 stages, ranging in their impact on improving inventory turns. Supply chain professionals are aiming to move up the curve, but this is impossible without the right inventory management tools. 

See how you rank on the inventory management maturity curve. 

Are you interested in building a sustainable supply chain?

Did you know that 76.6% of U.S. emissions are driven by manufacturing production? Reducing inventory is good for business, but it also a great way to make strides towards sustainable supply chain management. 

See 5 ways manufacturers can reduce their negative impact on the environment.