Sudhan Vignesh Akilan

▪ Strategizing and Improving Special Delivery Instructions Customer Journey

- Transformed collection and usage from a reactive open-text box SDI to a pro-active and parameterized SDI by compiling opportunities across all flows: from check-out to comms to self-service and agent workflows

- Sized and prioritized high-impact initiatives: a) building comprehensive SDI questionnaire in self-service and agent workflow, b) improving customer comms with cross-functional and product teams, aligning with OKRs

- Created one-pagers and business briefs to address low-effort fixes like changing the self-service cutoff for SDI

- Supported Product and Tech. teams with decision making through data analysis, clarifying business requirements, and end-user testing

- Reduced SDI related miss rates by ~55% (~2.2M USD / year) and SDI related contacts by ~40% (420k USD / year)

▪ Customer Service Lead supporting the launch of Free White Glove Experience to Wayfair customers

- Identified and communicated risks (increased customer contacts and miss rates, NPS drop) early in the process

- Aided leadership green light by performing trade-off analysis of risks vs rewards (order value, repeat rates)

- Obtained cross-functional teams’ buy-in to focus on initiatives to mitigate risks of increased contacts / miss rates

- Eliminated project roadblocks by flagging high-risk SKUs and piloting a customer outreach on delivery day

- Built an ongoing performance tracking and reporting dashboard to monitor KPI Impacts and sent read-outs at regular intervals outlining overall performance of operations and customer service metrics and projections

- Reduced estimated increased contacts by ~35% through de-risking measures and agent training

▪ Leading Large Parcel’s “Lost” Initiatives – Reducing GIE (Gross Incidence Exposure) and Customer Contacts

- Built a “Health” Dashboard using DataStudio, capturing the Large Parcel landscape (order volumes, customer contacts, incidents, and resolutions) and identified “Lost” as top priority for Large Parcel

- Formulated a policy anchored on MSBD (Must Ship by Date) through analysis of scan dates and resolution dates

- Lead a cross-functional team to create a nimbler agent facing “wizard” with “Lost” service policies tech- enabled preventing pre-mature resolutions (replacements, refunds) being given

- Partnered with Product to create “Best Choice Resolutions” matrix for scenarios including lost multi-cartons

- Saved ~6M USD / year in GIE across pre-shipped and in-transit stages

▪ Mentoring, Management and Leadership

- Managed an intern in my team to create a customer journey mapping for the highly nuanced “Lost” process flow

- Recruited and onboarded a Senior Analyst with BigQuery and Dashboarding. Supported him in running a Large Parcel Pilot outreach program, involving ETL and creating stored procedures using Kronos and metric monitoring

- Mentored another analyst in my team to create strategic roadmaps for “customer-initiated cancellation” journey

▪ Leading Development & Deployment of Home Depot Owned Replenishment – One Replenishment Engine (ORE)

- Partnered with cross-functional teams to firm-up product requirements and modifications from legacy engine

- Identified gaps in legacy replenishment– On-order Horizon, Campus On-Hands and Buy-pack rounding

- Developed validation for each input parameters contributing to SOQs and for each output components of SOQ

▪ Lead Time Prediction (Vendor to Fulfillment Center’s Lead Time) using Machine Learning – Python – Scikit Learn

- Identified features / algorithms and partnered with transportation, IT and BI teams to gather data

- Compared metrics across different algorithms – KNN, Random Forest, Adaptive & XG Boosted Regression Trees

- Improved model accuracy and RMSE using hyperparameters tuning, outlier removal, and by modifying features

- Implemented for domestic vendors, resulting in $4.2M order reduction per month without impacting In-Stocks

▪ Developing Start to End Auditing for Home Depot’s Multi-Hop Processes – Products Flowing thru. multiple buildings

- Identified potential gaps and process breakdowns in DvR – Home Depot’s first multi-hop process

- Mapped the complex multi-hop process flow: On-boarding to Replenishment to Order Generation to Fulfillment

- Automated the audits on staging tables to identify process breakdowns and created alerts using Tableau

▪ Enhancing Home Depot’s Safety Stock (ASL) methodology – Outlier Control and Null Sales

- Identified gaps in current Safety Stock algorithm – Sales Spikes and Null Sales marked as Zero

- Developed and implemented an outlier control methodology using advanced SQL algorithm (Local Outlier Factor)

▪ Multi-Quantity Price Table Creation in QAD and Development of Tool for Price Pick Up

- Transformed the ERP – QAD MFG PRO’s pricing menu from one-quantity pricing to multi-quantity pricing table

- Developed a VBA Macro-Enabled tool for auto-combining quantities from planned orders and auto-picking price from the multi-quantity supplier price lists, thereby saving 6 workhours per week for each of the team members

▪ Capacity Analysis & Constraint Update in QAD MSW – Packaging, Manufacturing and Dual Sourced Components
- Identified initial setup issues and analysed mismatch between capacity and load in master scheduling workbench
- Performed and analyzed cycle time studies, calculated OEE within packaging, manufacturing & external sources
- Identified bottlenecks for each item type and formulated capacity constraints to be updated in QAD

▪ Demand Forecasting and Capacity Split-up for Coated Components between Multiple Vendors
- Forecasted a five-year demand for coated SKUs aggregating inputs from Sales, Engineering & Sourcing teams
- Split up demand forecast between multiple vendors considering capacity growth, lead times & serviceability

• Project Management (Development Phase) for Technical and Engineering Projects – 22 Customer Projects

- Spearheaded NPD by understanding customer’s SOP, forecast and ramp-up, quality and cost demands

- Implemented process improvements, poka-yoke and setup time reduction methods to improve NPD capabilities

- Handled S&OP, ensuring quality and deliverability, resolving quality concerns until project attained maturity