The story: After graduating from the economics university, I had the opportunity to begin my career in logistics. My first job was as a responsible for order fulfillment and I discovered I was passionate about it. I can honestly say that logistics choose me. During my career I had several management roles in Logistics, Production and Manufacturing in different industries, starting as an export manager for one of IKEA suppliers. Then I worked as an outbound manager for Nokia and after this great experience I had in Nokia, I followed my career path as a Logistics Manager and Manufacturing Operations Manager in Bosch. In March 2021, I made a career change and now I am acting as Head of Logistics of Hirschmann Automotive TM. During my career I met great leaders that inspired me and helped me grow as a logistics professional. A quality director once told me that the difference between a winner and a loser is only in the details. Hard work, perseverance, and accuracy make the difference in the end.
Being Head of Logistics for Hirschmann Automotive Romania
The actual role requires responsability for all Logistics processes: Customer service, Production Planning, Procurement, Physical logistics with outbound and inbound operations, internal material flow, transport, packaging management, Projects, Continuous improvement, and Shared Services. The actual global context requires us to adapt, be flexible and change accordingly. From my point of view as the top 3 abilities for a logistics manager would be: Leading change, Leading people, and Participative management. An interesting aspect is that the skills asked for a leader today are different than in the past. Considering the explosion of digitalization and IoT, without IT skills a leader will not succeed. Another important skill today is empathy. The new generations of professionals are the smart and the sensitive ones. The old directive management style does not work for them and empathy makes the difference here.
2020 …. The challenges
During the pandemic we had more than our fare share of lessons to learn. The volatility of orders, the global crisis of microcontrollers that continues until today and for many months to come, all of those challenges demanded many fast decisions. Changing the plans and planning without the predictability of raw materials was not an easy job, but it had to be done. Another challenge was to organize teams based on this high planning fluctuation, to have proper communication, and to keep the team motivated. This unprecedent situation delivered us on a silver platter an important managerial lesson.
Transforming operations In Hirschmann, we continue invest in I4.0 and digitalization projects. Smart planning implementation, electronic Kanban, ensure more transparency and efficiency in logistics operations. We connect equipment’s and extract comprehensive data that help in our analyses and decisions. We have a big project now, together with colleagues from Austria, to build a Full automated warehouse and implement EWM for whole plant. I’m excited to be part of the great team that make this strategic project happen. The biggest project for 2021 is the fully automated warehouse that we started this year as part of a 7.000 sqm new platform. This will help us to manage the fast business growth. The first target of the logistics department is always to deliver in time and accordingly to the customer orders. The second objective for the agenda of the logistics department in 2021 is to redesign the internal material flow based of lean logistics principles and integrate the fully automated warehouse into the current processes.
