Straight to the Bottom Line®

About the author(s)

Robert A. Rudzki is President of Greybeard Advisors LLC, a firm that assists enterprises improve their financial performance. He is also a director of a privacy and security software company, and is an Advisory Board member of several companies. Previously, Bob was Senior Vice President and Chief Procurement Officer at Bayer Corp., where he led a nationally recognized transformation effort. Prior to that he was an executive of Bethlehem Steel Corp., which he led to recognition from Purchasing Magazine as a Best Places to Work, and a top-quartile ranking in a best practices survey of 160 global corporations. In the course of his career, he has held various executive management positions, which included finance, accounting, procurement and logistics, business development and P & L responsibility.

Douglas A. Smock is Editorial Director of GlobalCPO.com, an online source of procurement analysis and best-in-class practices. Previously, Doug was Editor-in-Chief of Purchasing Magazine. During his tenure, the magazine received five national awards for editorial excellence from the American Society of Business Press Editors. No other publication in this field had ever won even one of these awards. During his career, he also served as chief editor of Plastics World, Associate Publisher of Modern Mold and Tooling at McGraw-Hill, and staff writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He founded and produced the Urethanes Report and High-Tech Molding newsletters and has won or supervised staffs that earned three Jesse Neal awards – one of the most prized awards in the industry that recognizes editorial excellence in independent business publications.

Mike Katzorke currently serves as Vice President Supply Chain Management with Smiths Aerospace. Mike is a business process improvement professional with more than 20 years of leadership experience in operations, materials, manufacturing, quality, systems, and strategic supply chain management. Prior to joining Smiths in December 2003, he was with Cessna Aircraft Company as Senior Vice President of Supply Chain Management. He has participated and led in the application of Malcolm Baldrige, Lean, and Six Sigma tools in integrated improvement processes at three Fortune 100 companies.

Shelley Stewart, Jr. is Vice President of Supply Chain at Tyco, where he is responsible for $20 billion in spending and leads cross divisional sourcing teams in an effort to reduce procurement costs throughout Tyco by $1 billion by 2006. Shelley is also responsible for promoting best practices across the company’s supply chain organization. Prior to joining Tyco, Shelley was Senior Vice President of Supply Chain Management at Invensys plc, headquartered in London. Shelley’s career also included senior level procurement positions at Raytheon and United Technologies. He is currently a member of the Conference Board’s Supply Chain Council and sits on the visiting Board of Directors at Howard University’s School of Business.