Women in Supply Chain 2022 Award Winner: Kathleen Smith
Converge is proud to announce Kathleen Smith as a winner of this year’s Women in Supply Chain award!
Supply & Demand Chain Executive celebrates all of the women in its third annual Women in Supply Chain award, which honors female supply chain leaders and executives whose accomplishments, mentorship and examples set a foundation for women in all levels of a company’s supply chain network. Their accomplishments have made such a difference in the supply chain this year.
For over 20 years, Kathleen Smith has served as global services operations leader for Converge, an Arrow company, leading a team of supply chain specialists that support major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in managing their inventory challenges globally. She has been involved with some programs for more than 10 years, and for those customers, she is far more than just a piece of their supply chain; she is part of the foundation. In fact, she’s dubbed the backbone of Converge’s vendor-managed inventory programs and provides customers the confidence required to outsource their business to Converge. While most companies had to undertake extreme measures to navigate an electronic components shortage market, Smith expanded its global hub programs by adding facilities, equipment, personnel and additional process controls to meet modified plans and rapid expansion. She drove successful changes to support thousands of pallets of material already inbound from the customers’ electronics manufacturing services providers with nowhere else to put the products. The programs that Smith manages enable customers to decrease total operating expenses while supporting buffer inventory across multiple contract manufacturers.
“Kathleen is knowledgeable and experienced in all aspects of supply chain management from quote to invoice, including IT, reporting, warehousing, transportation, logistics, trade compliance, customer service/support, project management and quality. Kathleen is persistent and innovative in looking for better and more efficient ways to help drive cost out of the process for our clients. Kathleen is customer-focused and collaborative in all aspects of our business processes as global programs require dynamic teams all working towards a common goal,” according to Converge, an Arrow company. “Kathleen will be expanding our flagship programs for Converge by modifying them to meet the needs of the transformed supply chain that has evolved out of the shortage market. Kathleen knows our customers’ systems and supply chain processes better than they do in most cases. Her ability to drill down into the why and how enables Converge to propose optimal solutions that work within their processes and systems and often are less expensive and faster to implement.”
Congratulations, Kathleen, on this remarkable achievement and we’re honored to have you part of Converge.
Read the full announcement from Supply & Demand Chain Executive