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Paul Lord
Paul Lord

Paul Lord

VP Analyst
Gartner
Bio

Roles and Responsibilities:

Paul Lord is a Vice President Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain research organization, provides thought provoking and actionable insights in response to client questions and challenges related to inventory and cost.  His research positions emphasize the need for strategic alignment, design and planning to deliver reliable, optimized supply that effectively fulfills demand. He provides ongoing client support through published inventory performance management methods that emphasize rigorous measurement to provide insights and stakeholder feedback on the impact of incentives, decision biases and business model constraints. ​

Background / Professional Experience:

Mr. Lord joined Gartner in 2009 with the company’s acquisition of AMR Research. Industry experience includes a broad range of roles in the chemical industry.

  • Gartner / AMR Research – 17 years
  • Lyondell Chemical Company, Business Manager, SC Operational Excellence Mgr – 11 years
  • ARCO Chemical Company – R&D Engineer, Product Manager & Supply Chain Planning Manager

Ensure Success with Inventory Analytics by Defining the Right Objective and Metrics

Inventory is not an appropriate objective function to be optimized. While reported as a lump sum balance sheet value, inventory fulfills multiple different stock functions to expand, protect and capture margin.

Rather than devising an inventory strategy that few can understand or align to, supply chain and operations leaders can enhance stakeholder partnership and support by developing and articulating supply strategies enabled by the effective positioning of inventory.

Instead of attempting to operationalize strategy by meeting the inventory target, business complexity requires the pursuit of optimized supply-demand balancing across diverse portfolios of raw materials, parts and finished goods.

Based on this re-framing, a comprehensive performance management framework with three distinct measurement levels will be shared. This framework provides insights to commercial, financial and operating stakeholders with increased explainability and actionability.   By reducing surprises and demystifying inventory performance for financial stakeholders, supply chain and operations leaders will liberate themselves to pursue maximized performance, enabled by analytics, rather than undermined and side-tracked by excessive oversight and redirection.

Professional / Leadership
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