Liam Lindley

Improving service levels and reducing working capital through better planning

I joined Hatmill in April 2020, following 12 years’ prior experience working in a supply chain capacity across the retail and distribution sectors.

My supply chain career started at Premier Farnell as an Asset Specialist and subsequently within projects and service improvement. I helped deliver a £2m margin improvement through the lowest cost geography project that optimised regional warehouses within the global supply chain.

I then moved to Singapore to continue sourcing products at their lowest cost, but also to support in transforming the proposition offered to customers in APAC. We bought and transferred over 60,000 SKU’s into our 3 regional hubs (Singapore, China and Australia) over 9 months. Whilst this project was seen as a huge success, delivering improved service to customers by 25%, there were P&L risks associated with such a substantial investment. This became my priority and first insight into forecasting which allowed the business to mitigate the majority of this risk.

I returned to the UK after 4.5 years in Singapore, taking a global role in Product Life Cycle Management to manage £40m of excess inventory. The role maintained the importance of forecasting but required greater commercial focus in marketing, pricing, and supplier data.

After a further 3 years with Premier Farnell, I left to join TJX Europe (TKMaxx) as a Planning Manager at one of their 5 European processing centres. The team and I managed all budgeted and forecasted volumes, efficiencies, inbound logistics, weekly production plans, recruitment, training, and business reporting.

The key highlights for the team and I over my 4-year tenure with TJX include:

• Moving premises to a purpose-built 1.6m sqft warehouse
• Transitioning 2m units over 6 weeks from our old processing centre
• Doubling our unit throughput from 39m units to 79m units
• Improving output per hour by 18%
• Saving over £1m per annum in outside storage costs
• Upgrading our time management system
• Increasing headcount by 300 associates
• Improving and standardising all our reporting infrastructure
• Assessing and validating a change in process that saves £250k a year in freight that will be implemented into all future processing centres

Supply chain consultancy has always been an aspiration of mine as I strive to add value, whilst enhancing my knowledge of both supply chains and businesses. Therefore I’m looking forward to working with the wide variety of clients Hatmill attracts in such a strong, experienced and dedicated team of professionals.