• Project Management

Player Roster: Nestlé

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Driver of business efficiency at Nestlé. Urged the company to spend more than $1 billion on the GLOBE (Global Business Excellence) project, to automate and integrate all of its behind-the-scenes operations, from purchasing to manufacturing to demand forecasting to distribution. Closed 38 factories, cut $1.6 billion in costs and capped technology spending at 1.9% of revenue, in the process.

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Insiders


Chris Johnson
Deputy Executive Vice President, GLOBE Program
Worked at “muscle jobs” in Southern California during high school and college, which he considers good preparation for working with Nestlé factory workers in the GLOBE rollout. Was managing director of Nestlé’s Taiwan operations when he got “vague” request to take on GLOBE. Agreed in mid-2000; survived revolt in 2001; remains head of project today.


Olivier Gouin
Information Systems Director, GLOBE
Was involved in several attempts to coordinate different installations of SAP software at Nestlé. Found it difficult to get managers to work together. Saw GLOBE, with its worldwide mandate, as a way to unify systems.


Mario Corti
Chief Financial Officer, 1996 to 2001
Championed GLOBE. Wanted to speed up financial reporting by a month, and get faster understanding of where businesses were faltering. Nicknamed “Super Mario”; left to become chief executive officer of Swissair, in ill-fated career move.


Michael “Mike” Garrett
Former Executive VP,Asia, Africa and Oceania
Began working for Nestlé in 1961. Believes in decentralization, even though he recruited Johnson to be head of Nestlé’s most visible centralized initiative, GLOBE.


Lars Olofsson
Executive VP, Strategic Business Units, Marketing
Joined Nestlé in 1976. Rose from head of Nordic countries to head of France to head of Europe. In France, spotted Gouin and recruited him to be technology-systems head of GLOBE project.


Martial Rolland
Managing Director, Nestlé India
Came to India at time of sluggish growth for the company. Pushed for conversion to GLOBE systems, in midst of change in Indian tax structures. Says GLOBE contributed to 9.4% growth rate in the last year.

PARTNERS


Nils Herzberg
Senior Vice President, Manufacturing, SAP
Proponent of “adaptive” business networks. Says GLOBE project created a “single source of truth” for Nestlé, by cleaning up its data and forcing choices on where the most reliable information is collected.


Emiel Van Schaik
Vice President, Consumer Products and Life Sciences, SAP
Says the Nestlé project “was broader [and] faster than we have done before.” Seventy percent of new code written for GLOBE will be built into future versions of SAP software, he says; only 30% stays with Nestlé.


Ronald Hafner
IBM Business Consulting Services, Global
Relationship Partner for Nestlé Helped Nestlé set up SAP configuration, development and testing services at Nestlé GLOBE Centers around the world, and at the GLOBE Business Technology Center at its headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland. Story Guide:

Nestlé Cooks Up A Global Supply Chain

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