Lifetime of Achievement: Torsten Pilz
For almost two decades, Torsten Pilz has been making a name for himself across the supply chain and operations space.
It’s why Honeywell’s SVP and Chief Supply Chain Officer was deservedly recognised in Supply Chain Digital’s latest Top 100 CSCOs list, placing at no.15 when the supplement was published towards the tail end of last year.
Henkel, Amazon and SpaceX are just some of the big players Torsten can count as former employers, demonstrating his immense pedigree and glowing reputation within the industry.
A distinguished supply chain career
Despite establishing himself as a supply chain and operations leader, Torsten Pilz actually has a background in chemical engineering, earning his BSc and MSc degrees followed by a doctorate at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.
Entering the world of work in the late-1990s, Torsten took up a role as Head of Process Development and Production Technologies at the Swiss chemicals powerhouse, Clariant, before opting for a change of direction as a consultant specialising in life sciences, consumer and chemicals at Strategy&, the strategy consulting arm of PwC.
His expertise in planning and logistics was clear for all to see and, soon, Henkel had swooped to install him as a Vice President in this realm.
Over the course of eight years, Torsten progressed through the ranks to eventually become SVP Global Operations and Supply Chain for the Beauty Care division, which also involved serving as CEO of Schwarzkopf & Henkel Production Europe.
Torsten’s three-and-a-half years with Amazon took him Stateside to the e-commerce giant’s Seattle headquarters.
As Vice President of Worldwide Operations, he led the execution and expansion of its global Consumables and Ultrafast eCommerce segment, comprising growing brands like AmazonFresh, AmazonPantry, AmazonCampus and Prime Now.
Prior to joining Honeywell, Torsten served as VP Operations and Supply Chain at Elon Musk’s space exploration and transportation venture, SpaceX, taking responsibility for planning, purchasing, material management and logistics.
He successfully built a team that supported dozens of launches a year, not to mention the development and production of the Falcon and Falcon Heavy Rockets, the Dragon Spacecraft and the SpaceX satellite programme.
In 2018, Torsten took the reins as CSCO at the multinational conglomerate, Honeywell. Following his appointment, then-CEO Darius Adamczyk praised the incoming executive’s impressive track record of “driving operational improvements and delivering outstanding results for companies with complex global supply chains”.
Increasing resilience at Honeywell
As CSCO at Honeywell, Torsten is broadly responsible for the integrated supply chain, including procurement and driving improvements in plant efficiency and working capital, while continuing to enhance quality and delivery.
As any supply chain leader working for a major global corporation would attest, the past few years have been far from straightforward thanks to a string of disruptions – COVID-19, the Suez Canal blockage and conflict in Ukraine and the Middle East among them.
Speaking on Honeywell’s ‘The Future Is…’ podcast earlier this year, Torsten said: “The last couple of years were pretty challenging, but I do think we’re seeing some sort of normalisation again.
“Things are still constrained in some areas of the world, but we’ve learned a lot and made our supply chain more resilient. I don’t think we’ll go back to the world as we knew it 10 years ago, but things are starting to normalise.”
On his efforts to transform and increase resilience within Honeywell’s supply chain, he added: “Historically, Honeywell had a supply chain that was primarily focused around single sources of supply, so we were very exposed to single suppliers and sole sourcing. This was done over many years to drive productivity.
“We changed that approach completely, so we’re now maybe 60% single-sourced; we used to be almost 90%. We spent a lot of time and effort making our supply chain more resilient, more stable and to hedge our bets a little bit.”
Committed to innovation
Torsten is firmly looking to the future as Honeywell’s supply chain chief.
This includes considering and deciding how emerging technologies such as generative AI (Gen AI) can be integrated into the organisation’s vast operations.
He reveals that, in 2023, he and his team came up with around 200 use cases for AI across the end-to-end supply chain. The first deployment came in customer experience in the form of a co-pilot designed to help agents and was followed by a technical support tool.
“I do think those are very encouraging examples and results,” Torsten continues. “This year, we made a decision that every sub-function in supply chain has two to three use cases where they have to deploy AI, because we feel it’s the future and the experiences have been really awesome.
“This is a first-mover advantage that I believe we have at Honeywell. I’m not aware of any other company doing this at such scale or speed.”
It’s this bold, forward-thinking approach that has served Torsten and his various employers so well over the past 25 years.
By continuing in the same vein, he stands to confirm his status as a true legend of the supply chain space.
******
Check out the latest edition of Supply Chain Magazine and sign up to our global conference series – Procurement and Supply Chain LIVE 2024.
******
Supply Chain Digital is a BizClik brand.