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Max Schlichter

PartnerLondon

Max Schlichter

PartnerLondon

Designs and leads supply-chain transformations for pharmaceutical, consumer-goods, agriculture, and chemical clients

Max is a supply-chain partner in the Operations Practice and is based in McKinsey’s London office.

Max has deep expertise in designing and leading supply-chain transformations, primarily in the pharmaceutical, consumer-goods, agriculture, and chemical industries. He specialises in digital and advanced-analytics supply-chain planning, including sales and operations planning (S&OP), inventory optimisation, supply-and-demand planning, and the control-tower approach.

Max’s recent work includes the following:

  • implementing a global performance-management system in a consumer-health company to identify and address obsolescence risks, excess inventory, and potential lost sales across more than 50 markets and 20 manufacturing sites
  • designing and deploying a supply-chain transformation in a global pharmaceutical company to increase supply-chain agility, focusing on supply planning, end-to-end lead time, and inventory optimisation
  • designing and implementing a supply-chain-planning system for a global agriculture company, including macroeconomic forecasting as part of the demand-planning process, advanced analytics in supply planning to minimize production and logistics costs, and S&OP for cross-functional collaboration
  • redesigning the implementation road map of the supply-chain, manufacturing, and R&D operating model for a major consumer company
  • designing and implementing a supply-chain system for a global biochemical-pharma company, including lead time and inventory optimisation, supply-chain configuration, and S&OP integrated with cross-functional weekly execution, such as the control-tower approach
  • performing an inventory-optimisation and lead-time-optimisation diagnostic, redesign, and implementation for a major generic-pharmaceutical company, using production planning and parameter optimisation

Published work

Brexit: The bigger picture—Rethinking supply chains in a time of uncertainty,” McKinsey & Company, May 2019

Past experience

Stork Fokker Technologies
Project manager in supply-chain planning

Education

Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands
PhD, engineering, supply-chain planning

Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Undergraduate, industrial engineering