Lakshmi Narasimhan Balakrishnan

As IT transformation and delivery leader for Manufacturing, Mfg. Quality, Warehouse & Logistics Management and Supply Chain operations processess, responsibilities include:

• Plan and control the delivery of IT/OT programs/projects and ensuring alignment with business objectives
• Leveraged technology to drive business growth, operational excellence, digital agility, driving innovation.
• Facilitates and chairs meetings with executive management to assist in determining strategic IT direction
• Manages and Measures performance to assure program/project is progressing per approved parameters by assessing changes to scope , RAID action plan proactively
• Fostered a culture of continuous improvement and championed digital & data literacy across the organization
• Maintain compliance with applicable corporate and regulatory policies and procedures
• Reports to CIO with dotted line reporting responsibilities to COO and VP of Supply Chain.

Assumes role of Delivery Director due to vacant positions

Key Accomplishment

• AI Strategy: Built AI Strategy. Formed and chairs Governing body with business leads for value identification and priority alignment
• Asset Management & Optimization: Architected and deployed AI based Predictive maintenance solution using SAP Plant maintenance and AVEVA OSI-PI (SCADA). improving asset availability by 10%
• Product Anomaly Detection – Partnered with Microsoft to build, train and deploy AI models to detect product spec variation, increased first time pass KPI metric.
• People Productivity Improvement – Lead the rollout of Copilot for M365 products, improving the overall productivity by 10%
• SIOP (Sales Inventory Optimization Plan)– Architected and transformed production execution and confirmation processes in SAP to provide real-time inventories, integration production planning into production execution
• Inventory and Warehouse Management – Improved inventories accuracy to 98% by architecting and deploying SAP mobile solution at plants warehouse and at 3PL warehouses
• Environment Health Safety and Substantiality (EHSS) - Partnered with Benchmark Gensuite to consolidate all EHSS processes and functions into a centralized environment
• Operator/Control Tower optimization: Partnerd with Yokogawa to roll out OSI-PI vision for rich UX and real time operational visibility and process alerts.
• Manufacturing Quality – Enhanced SAP QM processes for first time quality KPI gaps by integrating LIMS and MDE

• Managed Mfg. IT portfolio which tripled in size within 2 years with 90% of projects/programs aligned with Corporate and IT strategic cost-savings and/or revenue-generating initiatives. Key projects:
• OSI- PI (Data Management Platform for Industrial Operations) implementations for all 7 NA Plants
• Plant Maintenance & Project Management Migration from Avantis to SAP
• Plant Alarm Management Implementation for NA & UK sites to rationalize & prioritize incident alarms
• SolarWinds & Forescout for Plant devices & Network monitoring
• Transport Management system
• Lab Management system
• Environment, Health, Safety Management system
• Centralized plants physical security access and monitoring system
• Production & Plant costing integration to S4/HANA program
• Led process improvements to ensure programs ($50M program to migrate from SAP ECC to S4/HANA) and projects were delivered in a standard, efficient, and timely manner, improving productivity and delivery cycles by at least 20%. Transformed to Agile product-oriented delivery model. Established a high degree of financial discipline across the portfolio of projects
• Engaged stakeholders and cross-functional subject matter experts to identify potential issues and coordinate development of plans and controls for their mitigation throughout project life cycle. Supported product managers to plan, prioritize and implement their road maps
• Advocated for company-wide best practice project management tools and techniques and reinforce their utilization through feedback and demonstrated leadership. Manage, train and mentor team, monitor KPI’s, and create team and individual success plans.
• Drive optimization of solutions through an understanding of business needs and technology capabilities. Establish consistent, scalable systems and protocols to consistently improve operational efficiencies.

Client: Abbive ; Role: Program Manager

• Turned high visibility, high value program from unstructured into structured project organization by integrating procurement, Accounts Payable, Legal, SAP process touch points. Established program governance and control cadences and defined approach for the execution of the projects.

Client: Caterpillar; Role: Program Manager

• Led global team to deploy SAP, Ariba & EDI solutions in multiple facilities which supported enterprise procurement processes, reduced variable costs, and standardized business processes
• Solution owner for Assurance of Supply center (Supplier Performance, Visibility), EDI communication, Barcode Labels, Facility Capability Assessments and other enterprise supply driven solutions
• Developed the strategy to deploy a cloud based B2B solution to improve supplier connectivity & collaborate while reducing facilities material cost
• Collaborated with various implementation partners (Business, IBM, Deloitte, Infosys) to communicate program objective and to align and commit to business priorities.
• Responsible for developing Monthly Operational Reports for Global Supplier Network leadership

• Led global project and support teams for the design, develop, implement and management of direct (SAP) and indirect material (Ariba) procurement process and systems to support Flextronics Global Procurement Organization.
• Developed process (deployment methodology using Agile framework, Architecture Review Board (ARB), change control Board (CCB) and tools (checklist / templates and standard work) to reduce deployment cost and time and to improve the team’s productivity, utilization and quality of the deliverables.
• Developed metrics and KPI’s for management review and to measure the quality of the solution / systems.
• Managed a team of 50+ employees and vendor consultants, approximately 90% of SAP technical work delivered out of the offshore facility in Chennai, India.
• Led the completion 3 LEAN projects within 3 months.
• Helped to setup data analytics CoE to provide service to various business groups/solutions. Built a team of Software Engineers, Architects, Leads to support organization priorities
• Involved in Request for Proposal (RFP), vendor selection and statement of work (SOW) preparation for the migration of procurement process / solution from on premise to on-demand cloud platform.

Provided SAP consulting services for the following clients :

• Responsible and accountable for Revenue Generation, Revenue management, Client Satisfaction,
• General Motors - 5 Years engagement for rolling out SAP Finance and Procurement processes
• Visteon - 5 Years engagement for Separation from Ford Motors and rollout of SAP, PLM and EDI solutions
• ConocoPhilips - Custom application management for payments