What Measures can Manufacturers Take Today to Protect and Reduce the Impact of a Potential Economic Downturn?

Dr.-Ing. Sebastian Gottschalk studied Mechanical Engineering at the RWTH Aachen in Germany and INSA de Lyon in France. He did his PhD studies on Production Engineering and obtained an Executive MBA title of the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). After working as leader of the business unit Production Management in industry consultancy and research at the RWTH Aachen he joined Beiersdorf AG in 2009. He took here the global responsibility for the production network development and Beiersdorf´s global production efficiency program and built and started-up the company’s biggest overseas facility in Mexico. Today Sebastian is leading Beiersdorf’s Supply Chain Transformation and global Engineering. He is responsible for the factory master planning and Capex program for the production network.

Mark Carnaghan is a senior business leadership professional and MBA graduate with distinction who is currently a Director within Meal Solutions Division as part of 2 Sisters Food Group. In this capacity he directs the flagship business unit at Carlisle producing prepared meals across a variety of categories for its principle customer, M&S. Following 5 years’ service as an Army Infantry officer Mark picked up a manufacturing leadership role in Mars before coming to specialize in business Operational Excellence journeys and turnarounds developing a strong track record of delivery as he has progressed into General Management and directorship. This has included leading operations and business units within own label food manufacturing and printing at Greencore, Communisis and latterly 2 Sisters Food Group. As an inspirational leader Mark has led successful cultural and business change programmes within and across sites establishing high performing, empowered teams and sustainable processes to deliver bottom line results including in Information Management. People are at the heart of Mark’s leadership philosophy which stresses role modelling best practice, mindfulness and a strong sense of productive service to enhance the experiences of employees at work and the health of the business as a whole. As a passionate developer of current and future leaders Mark actively coaches and mentors within 2SFG while also being a vocal champion for the Company’s newly launched behaviours. On top of this Mark lectures and mentors students at the University of Leeds as part of the ‘Leaders in Residence’ scheme and is a key note speaker in a number of other settings including business and military leadership events.

Dr Kamila Walters, after completion of A-levels at a College of Technology, joined the Jan Dlugosz University in Czestochowa (Poland), to study ‘STEM Subjects with Teacher Training’. She holds both BSc and MSc degrees in Physics, also gained from the same University. Equipped with the MSc degree, she decided to continue her career in research and Academia at the Czestochowa University of Technology (Poland), and, in 2005, successfully completed a PhD thesis, and was awarded a PhD degree in Physics, at the University of Lodz (Poland). In 2007, after moving to the UK, Dr Kamila Walters joined the University of Brighton as a Research Officer, to work on the successful completion of an Anglo-French collaborative project in the field of novel composite materials. After completion of this project, she moved to work in Industry, and, for the next 10 years, gained extensive experience working within a wide range of departments in an SME company within the FMCG sector; these departments included: operations, planning (as Planner, and, later, Planning and Reporting Manager), supply chain (as Supply Chain Manager), and finance (business intelligence – as Finance Business Partner). In June 2019, Dr Kamila Walters returned to work in Higher Education, as Lecturer in Supply Chain and Operations at the University of Brighton – in order to pass-on her industrial experience and to help to develop a new workforce, capable of taking on challenges of working within the Supply Chain.

Andreas has started his career as legacy system developer in banking IT, quickly developing into process and information flow topics. At Kotányi he concepted the central business intelligence solution and created approx. 1000 reports and analysis. With the implementation of SCM in 2008 he changed department to create effective supply chain control tools and lead internal projects. In 2013 he became Director Supply Chain Management. He is now in lead of customer service, logistics, supply chain operations, S&OP and business intelligence. Main responsibilities are reduction of lost sales, increasing goods availability, capacity management and enabling high operational stock.