Gary Dixon

Safran UK is a Shared Service Centre that looks after all the Indirect Purchasing requirements of all Safran UK businesses. Key categories include Logistics; Consumables; CAPEX; HR; Multi site FM requirements; Packaging; IT and Utilities.

During my 3 year period I was responsible for the Hitachi Rail Europe (HRE) Indirect Procurement Team with a particular emphasis on Infrastructure Maintenance; Indirect Contracts and the businesses P2P process. My time with HRE covered the agreement of multi depot contracts + specifications for common Indirect requirements. I successfully grew the team to right size it both regionally to support operational needs and centrally in London to cover Corporate requirements.

Amtico is a market leading manufacturer and distributor of LVT flooring to the Commercial and Residential markets. With manufacturing facilities in UK and USA and Sales Operations in UK, USA, Germany, France, Sweden, UAE, Brazil and China. Amtico was formerly private equity backed and after a successful trade sale in March 2012, the business is now a subsidiary of the USA flooring major, Mannington Mills Inc. My role at Amtico encompassed responsibility for the management and development of its UK Purchasing function and all Mannington Inc. purchasing requirements outside of the USA. As a result, I was heavily involved in sourcing both products and key raw materials on a Global basis. This resulted in me travelling to the Far East (China; Japan; Korea and Taiwan) and the USA on a regular basis. In the time I was with with Amtico we formalised the Supply Chain Development process and developed a comprehensive Supplier Requirements Manual that outlined to all key / core suppliers the tools Amtico would be using. As a 'hands-on' member of the Purchasing Team, I also took responsibility for my share of 'key / core' suppliers. In addition to the above, I was personally responsible for the commercial aspects (i.e. RFP’s through to Contract Negotiation and Contract Award) of the Group’s major capital requirements.

For a period of 14 months I worked on various projects in the Middle East initially involved supporting ADMM (Abu Dhabi Motorsports Management) Procurement function with all the major aspects of procurement required to support the 2011 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix (F1). As a result of its Government ownership, the Corporate Governance and processes adopted by ADMM were akin to those adopted in the Public Sector in the UK. This 'hands on' role saw me take responsibility for several major categories of spend. After ADMM, I took on board a consultancy assignment with a Major Utilities Company based in Riyadh supporting their procurement function particularly in the areas of Vendor Prequalification (PQQ) and Vendor Performance Management (VPM). In addition I was responsible for projects with other clients with Saudi Arabia that included the writing and compiling of procedures; processes and supporting manuals.

• Develop the NES supply chain processes and procedures which promoted awareness of, and successfully integrated, engineering and quality requirements into all arrangements and orders placed with suppliers. • Managed the current and future supply chain requirements to support NES’s main customers including Sellafield Limited and Babcock International. • Developed appropriate supplier arrangements to deliver quality and schedule performance and cost savings. • Established and developed a Supply Chain Development process that met / exceeded the requirements of NES and all its major clients. This included the design and implementation of a dedicated Supplier Portal. • Reviewed and assesed the existing NES supply chain resources and identified any skill gaps, development opportunities and training needs. • In conjunction with Heads of Finance and Manufacturing, integrated supply chain requirements within broader business manufacturing and planning processes.

I joined Carillion on a 4 month assignment to provide some interim Category Management support to cover for notice periods of permanent recruits. Categories covered include:  Critical Power – covering all requirements for UPS’s and Generators. Main duties included generating Preferred Supplier Agreements; reducing ‘non-compliant spend; rationalising supply base and providing bid support for Major contracts Carillion are biding for.  Electrical Distributors – like Critical Power covering all general category management duties but also responsible for establishing an online catalogue agreement for agreed ‘basket’ of top 5000 items. Also, responsible for rolling out P Cards as a method of payment.  UBS Project Lead – UBS is a major client to Carillion and issued a 10% Cost Reduction Challenge in January. As Project Lead I co-ordinated the activities of all Category Managers / Lead Buyers to meet the clients demands. Project was completed at the end of March and delivered savings in excess of £200k (circa 11%) on the influencable spend that could be targeted, without compromising Category Plans / Preferred Supplier Agreements. My contract ended during May 2010 after which I opted to take a summer sabbatical before looking for my next assignment.

Enterprise is a £1.1billion Group that specialises in contracts that maintain the infrastructure of the UK. Major clients of Enterprise include many Local Governments, MoD, The Highways Agency, National Grid, United Utilities and Severn Trent Water. I joined Enterprise in November 2008 with a brief that required me to:  Establish a ‘leading edge’ Procurement function that would enable Enterprise to deliver and exceed Client expectations.  Recruit and train a team of Procurement Professionals to help deliver a Transformation Programme that included the use of Category Management tools and techniques.  Introduce streamlined P2P processes including the use of Procurement cards and designing and implementing a Catalogue system / process.  Develop Category Plans that will deliver savings of approximately £12 million in 2009 including establishing Formal Agreements and Service Level Agreements with all Strategic Suppliers. Categories covered to date have included Fuel, Plant Hire, Aggregate Materials, and several areas of Indirect spend including Stationery, Fleet, Mobile Telephones, and PPE.

Caparo Vehicle Products is a £300m Division of Caparo Industries (turnover circa £800 million). The main objective of my role included standardising the way in all Divisional companies purchased and managed the supply base. Also, CVP were constantly acquiring companies out of Administration and I acted as part of the due diligence team and took responsibility for many of the post acquisition tasks the businesses required. One of my assignments included spending 3 days per week as Interim MD of Caparo Vehicle Technologies in Basingstoke – a business that is responsible for the design and manufacture of the latest ‘supercar’ and also composites design projects for major OEM’s such as Honda, Jaguar - Land Rover and Aston Martin. From a Purchasing viewpoint, I was instrumental in streamlining processes within all CVP Group Companies and setting targets and objectives to the CVP supply base during a number of Supplier Conferences held during the September prior to my departure. I also formed a Divisional Purchasing team which met bi-monthly to help leverage the CVP Group Spend and Supplier Development Processes. Major achievements included:  Developing Caparo’s manufacturing facilities in India and creating market share / demand within the European Market. The main reason for my involvement in this was my knowledge of the Global Fastener market and the manufacturing capabilities of Caparo’s Global competitors.  Establishing professional purchasing departments across CVP Group Companies – including the necessary recruitment and training.  Establishing licensing agreements to enable Caparo to manufacture and sell a broader range of ‘niche products’. Furthermore, I was heavily involved in implementing the ‘Caparo Xchange’ which is a web based system I developed that allows CVP Companies to generate enquiries and also ‘post’ key supplier data for suppliers to access to view their performance data.

I returned to Infast during June 2002 to take up the challenge of professionalising the Industrial Division of the Infast Group in the same way I had the Automotive business when I was Divisional Purchasing Director (see September 1996 – October 2000 below). Amongst other things, whilst holding this role I: • Totally revamped the company Supply Chain Development Programme to one that became interactive via a dedicated portal within the Infast Group website. • Increased spend with preferred Global sources by 40% without compromising quality, stock turns or customer service levels. • Achieved notional cost savings in 2002 and 2003 of £1.8m on a spend of £25m in a climate of spiralling raw material costs. 2004 provided different challenges with the availability of raw material being as key as minimising the effect of increases upward of 50%. • Took responsibility for driving Group Purchasing Policy – including the integration of Infast USA and the Groups Far East sourcing office in Singapore.

My brief within the Co-op required me to develop purchasing strategies for the Commercial Division of The Co-operative Group. CWS had invested over £10 million on an Oracle computer system. As part of my role I was involved in developing e-procurement practices, Divisional policies / procedures and strategies. CWS (Commercial Division) had a total spend in excess of £600m on a wide range of goods and services and during my time there we started to introduce some Category Management techniques for their major areas of spend. Given that the two major parts of Commercial Division were Funerals & Travelcare the synergies within main areas of spend were not great. During my period with CWS, a major project that I was responsible for was to Outsource Utilities and Fuel procurement (CWS had a £45m spend in this area). The proposal saved £2.1m in purchase costs and they also could have reduced headcount by 24. Prior to me leaving CWS, this project was handed over to Property Services for them to implement.

The initial part of my role with Infast included a 9 month secondment to Caradon Plc (parent company at the time) as Group Purchasing Executive. This role involved the auditing / review of Group Companies Procurement processes and making recommendations for improvement using Group Purchasing Best Practice. Infast (both Distribution and Manufacturing) comprised 8 companies and had a spend in excess of £100 million on a diverse range of products, raw materials (including steel) and services. My role included identifying synergies across the Divisions and developing appropriate strategies for the main areas of spend. In addition, along with the Technical Services Director, I was personally responsible for developing and implementing a Group Supply Chain Development Programme that was recognised by main customers such as Jaguar, Land Rover and JCB as being – leading edge, particularly for the industry sector Infast was in.

Following on from my period in Kuwait during 1990 - 1991 with British Aerospace I embarked upon a period of self-employed consultancy. During this time projects included working in Mogadishu (Somalia) providing contracts for support services (working with the UN).