The Clorox Company

Currently donning the roles of the SVP and Chief Supply Chain Officer for The Clorox Company, Rick McDonald started his journey right after graduating from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He spent a few years working at Frito Lay in manufacturing plants. Soon after, McDonald joined The Clorox Company, where he worked in several roles across the supply chain for domestic and international businesses. This helped him attain a lot of perspective and experience across the end-to-end supply chain, which paved the way for his current position. Today, McDonald has been with the company for over three decades and leads a talented group of 6,000 teammates across all countries and regions where Clorox operates. He leads in all aspects of the supply chain, including sourcing, demand and supply planning, internal and external manufacturing, engineering, quality assurance, environmental health and safety, and logistics. 

What are some of the challenges facing the industry today?

Today’s global supply chain is extremely unpredictable and uncertain, mostly due to growing inflation, concerns around logistics, and labor availability. The current inflation rate is unprecedented and not at all anticipated. It is heavily impacting the operations of many enterprises, including commodities, maintenance, repair, and the growing costs with increasing demand for salaries, benefits, and wages. 

On the logistics side, the challenges are pretty obvious as we see the capacity in the U.S. and the global shipping market getting completely disrupted and rapidly evolving. This has further led to a lot of cost and service challenges for consumer packaged goods companies.

Moreover, there are issues around labor availability Clorox has always been results-oriented and maintained high-performance standards, and we have several team members who have been with our organization for many years. We continue to value their expertise while also bringing in new talent to meet our evolving business needs. In the last couple of years, and especially over the last 6-9 months, finding the right talent for the job roles at manufacturing plants, offices, or managing supply chain operations has become more difficult. 

How has the industry evolved in recently?

I believe simplification is the key to unlocking the supply chain’s true value. As such, most companies including Clorox have sought to simplify their processes, portfolios, and product mix. This will be a driving factor in ensuring the right products are available at the right time and in the right place for the end consumers.

“While most people talk about the toolset, it is important never to lose sight of the two most important aspects leadership mindset and the understanding of what the future needs to look like and anticipate whether leaders will move in that direction and what upskilling and reskilling will be necessary to achieve the future state…..”

Furthermore, many enterprises are engaging in new technology implementations to enhance output and quality of work-life. For instance, at Cloroxwe are looking for opportunities to leverage technology to improve our processes and improve people’s lives in terms of their daily work, the quality of work, and the purpose behind it. For this, last August we announced that we would invest approx. $500 millionover five years in transformative technologies and processes.. As a result, weplan to implement a new ERP, marketing personalization, and numerous supply chain operations capabilities. This will fundamentally and foundationally changed the company’s technology platform, our ways of working and how we operate. 

I believe it all comes down to the mindset, skillset, and toolset within an organization. While most people talk about the toolset, it is important never to lose sight of the two most important aspects leadership mindset and the understanding of what the future needs to look like and anticipate whether leaders will move in that direction. It is also important to continue upskilling and reskilling initiatives for team members within an organization, which has to do a lot with change management to leverage technology. In my opinion, this is a fundamental shift in how large digital projects are viewed. 

What disruptions will occur in the supply chain industry in the coming years?

The word of the hour is ‘change.’ We foresee the coming months and years to bring many changes in terms of the way we work and operate how we have adjusted to the post-pandemic world, and the growing technological advancements. In the past, we were all habituated to the organized in just-in-time mode, just-in-time capacity, supplies, and trying to have a minimal amount of working capital, both for raw and packaging materials and finished goods.

However, in this era of evolution, we have transitioned into a just-in-case model, where there is more supplier redundancy, increased internal and external capacity redundancies, and a continuous need to identify more options to help absorb shock from any future disruptions. This is evidence of the true resilience of our supply chain and that of other enterprises. We all have learned a great deal from the past two years. As we move forward, we will continue to expand our supply base, manufacturing capabilities, and logistics capacity to foster a more resilient supply chain.

Could you share a piece of advice for those venturing into the same arena as you?

The first and foremost nurture and develop the skills that are necessary and valuable in today’s ever-changing environment. It is important, now more than ever, for supply chain leaders to have the ability to be flexible, adaptable, and make quick decisions, even without having all the data. In these times, supply chain leaders need to rely on and trust their judgment and intuition to make decisions quickly. In addition, we need to look for creative solutions to solve the challenges that we will face in the future, whether they are digital solutions or process improvements. Even though we are in unchartered territory now, in many ways, we need to alter our mindset, enhance different skillsets, and identify varied solutions to be successful.