Professional Profile: Dave Clark, vice president of materials, Plexus Corp.
Brian Batterman
Staff -- Purchasing, 9/16/2004 2:00:00 AM
Title: Director of supply chain strategy
Company: Plexus Corp. of Neenah, Wis., a $900-million contract manufacturer that provides advanced electronics design, manufacturing and testing services.
Reports to: Dave Clark, vice president of materials.
Education: Associates degree in Electronic Engineering from Herzing Institute (now Herzing College), Madison, Wis., and Bachelors Degree in Finance from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Professional background: Various positions in the computer service industry and electronics industry; financial management for Plexus, then materials management and now supply chain management.
Commodities purchased: Responsible for $700 million in purchased commodities. Top three buys: semiconductors, printed circuit boards and custom engineered components.
Duties: Directly responsible for global sourcing effort, and development and implementation of such supply chain solutions as vender-managed inventories, automatic stock replenishment and direct-order fulfillment. Plexus' materials organization is broken into two categories, strategic and tactical. He is responsible for the strategic organization. The main functions are: sourcing, supplier contracts, supply chain model development and implementation, and supplier management. "We are a centralized group that services the global Plexus organization." (Note: The tactical group is based within each manufacturing site, and manages materials at the user-customer level.)
How purchasing has changed in the last five years: "Obviously, semiconductor manufacturing techniques have been changed by reduced geometries and increased wafer sizes, and the increased rate of producing the components. In turn, technology has driven a lot of sourcing change." More recently, the time to market and the shorter leadtimes that come from customers and customers' customers "have demanded significant improvement in inventory velocity and throughput, which mandates more robust supply chain solutions."
Greatest challenge: Actual implementation of complete supply chain solutions. "We run a collaborative business environment with our supply base and seek to minimize our number of suppliers. Then we leverage a significant amount of spend with that minimum number of suppliers. I think that everyone has gotten good at implementing supply chain solutions within their four walls. But how you link those up with others in the supply chain is a huge challenge. If you don't do it correctly, you can drive a significant amount of supply-chain inefficiency."
On lowest total cost vs. lowest price: "We look at cost of materials in two separate buckets. First, the component's cost; second, all the cost elements that make up the overhead in moving that component through the supply chain. In our sourcing efforts, we work with our suppliers to drive the lowest cost for the components, the services provided and any other redundant activity in the management of the material." The premier Plexus suppliers have earned the designation of "matrix" supplier. There is a specific and rigorous strategy to identify, qualify, and manage matrix suppliers. Matrix suppliers comprise approximately 90% of Plexus' total spend, and number less than 200. "The reduction in total suppliers over the past five years has been significant."
On purchasers involvement in new product development: "Plexus has a separate business unit that is geared strictly towards design called Plexus Technology Group. It has 350 engineers that do everything from design to complete electronic design for customers. The engineers are linked in with our global sourcing organization and leverage off of our matrix suppliers (prequalified suppliers that we spend a large part of our money with). Purchasing people get involved right at the front end of production."
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