field of supply chain
management?
My career has been in and out of ITI received my
degree in computer science and electrical control systems
from Wayne State Universitybut Ive always been fasci-
nated by the complexity of supply chain issues. As supply
chains become longer due to globalization, the problems
get even more complex.
Ive worked in IT as well, in the supply chain business
organization. At various automakers, I ran production
scheduling as well as worked on the IT side. My business
process knowledge has definitely helped me in this role at
GM, lending to more credibility on the operations side of
the business. The supply chain organization here centers
around processes, and the IT people work in lockstep with
Inside Supply Chain
Adriana Karaboutis is the process information officer
for Global Purchasing and Supply Chain (GPSC) at
General Motors. She has been with the company for three
years and reports to both the group vice president and
chief information officer, Ralph Szygenda, and the group
vice president of GPSC, Bo Andersson.
Karaboutis is responsible for GMs IT innovation and
modernization for purchasing, order fulfillment, supply
operations and logistics worldwide. The systems she is
responsible for support the more than $100 billion that
GM spends for direct and indirect materials as well as for
inbound and outbound logistics.
In this interview, conducted by Supply Chain Leader
editor Victoria Cooper in Detroit in early August, Karaboutis
describes the impact of globalization and digitization on
GMs IT strategy for global purchasing and supply chain.
Scaling to different markets around the world calls for innovation and flexibility in the systems
that support the business processes. Heres what GM is doing to meet the challenge.
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/ October 2007
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the process leaders. I believe GM has a history of integrating
technology and business processes very effectively.
Is on-time delivery still one of GMs primary areas
of concern?
Today more than everwith the globalization of the
companydelivering parts and vehicles on time is critical.
We source, build and sell across the globe, and the accuracy
and timely delivery within the supply chain of finished
product is critical for our suppliers, plants and dealers.
Order-to-delivery (OTD) time is something we watch
very closely to meet each markets specific demands. For
example, in California people typically want a car right
now. The market pattern is to buy off the lot. People
want to see the car, feel the car and drive the car quickly.
Outside the United States and in other parts of the country,
the buying pattern may be different: ordering a vehicle
might be expected to take 2530 days. In Germany, for
example, you see a significant amount of build-to-order
requests. So, while delivering on time is still very important
to us throughout the supply chain, build-to-order, or OTD
times, are designed to meet specific market demands by
region or country.
If you think about globalization and what were trying
to support in the supply chain and our global systems,
were looking at a produce anywhere, source anywhere,
build anywhere, sell anywhere, service anywhere kind of
paradigm. Its not all about regional build and sell anymore.
Now the globe is the footprint for all of our processes.
From a systems perspective, this presents a new set of
challenges around flexibility, speed and global availability
of our systems.
What is the biggest challenge of globalization for
GM, in your view?
GM is handling globalization extremely well. We are
currently looking at our emerging-market strategies and
working from an IT perspective to ensure that we have
cost-effective, scalable global solutions that will support
the business in these markets. Bo Andersson, our Group
VP of Global Purchasing and Supply Chain, is looking to
source parts at best-shore locations, so we need to make
certain that we provide systems capability so he can make
the best-informed decisions, based on best total landed
cost, very quickly. Bo makes purchasing decisions 24/7
through buying organizations that are strategically placed
around the globe. These organizations buy for all vehicle
platforms around the world.
If we dont provide 24/7 systems availability for these
buyers with near real-time information, we will fail the
organization. Equally, we need to have supply chain systems
in place to support the release and movement of parts
from suppliers to plants and of vehicles from plants to
dealersseamlessly.
GM has no boundariesgeographical, structural or
organizational. And we want to use our entire supplier
and manufacturing base to address global demand. So,
our systems need to follow the same paradigm: global,
seamless, cost-effective and scalable.
What are your major IT initiatives right now?
Our IT initiatives align strategically with GMs busi-
ness goals. In GPSC, were currently working to standard-
ize on global systems that are in our bill of IT, which
is similar to a bill of material for vehicles. By reducing
regional-specific systems, we ensure that we will have
commonality around the world, that we can release
upgrades to our systems and that all regions will benefit
immediately from these upgrades. This allows us to be in
a much stronger position to react to business process
changes and requirements.
Simultaneously, were focusing on bringing all of our
logistics systems in-housethese systems were historically
part of a joint ventureas well as creating new functionality
around best total-landed-cost analysis, steel purchasing,
resale systems and overall modernization of our legacy
systems.
What will be your next areas of focus?
We are going to continue working on our legacy mod-
ernization with an eye toward creating the fastest, lowest
INTERVIEW
CONTINUED
on Next Page . . .
Globalization at GM
GM has a history of integrating
technology and processes very
effectively. Interview
(Continued)
Supply Chain Leader
/ October 2007
14
As part of our strategy, we are commonizing on a stan-
dard suite of supply chain software from i2 as the basis for
most of this new functionality. Our objective is to leverage
a common backbone and move away from custom code
where it makes sense to do so.
We have very solid global systems in the core purchas-
ing and supply chain functions. Were looking to improve
these systems while delivering the new functionality that I
mentioned earlier.
Could you elaborate on your use of one platform?
While were using the i2 Agile Business Process
Platform for functionality within i2 applications, were
also using other methods for our legacy system modern-
izations. Essentially, we are determining, system by system,
the best approach for moving into the future.
cost systems for our emerging markets that align with our
bill of IT. Also, visibility tools are becoming more and more
critical with our expanding supply chain, and we need to
streamline the number of order management systems.
What did you inherit when you came into your role?
I inherited some very robust, solid systems that were
designed extremely well to serve our current environment.
Unfortunately, I inherited a lot more of them than we
ultimately want! Thats why were looking to retire
regional applications that have duplicate functionality
around the globe as we modernize our legacy environments.
We have an excellent materials management system and a
world-class purchasing system. These are the cornerstones of
our GPSC suite. We are continuing to improve these from
an architectural perspective and working to make them
lighter and less monolithic in some areas. I also inherited
multiple order management systems, and this is an area
where some strong convergence needs to happen globally.
We have a very strong agenda in this space. It involves com-
ponentizing the order management systems into services
and taking advantage of service-oriented architecture.
What has happened with electronic data interchange
(EDI)? Is it still useful?
Were very strong in EDI. Covisint is our strategic
partner for EDI, and it supports GM globally.
What about the 1990s purchasing portals GM got
involved in?
Our purchasing portal is our own in-house portal that
serves us well. GM SupplyPower is a solid portal that
serves as a gateway for suppliers to access GMs Web-
based systems. Its a common system for GM to meet
suppliers needs across all process areas. We will continue
to use it into the foreseeable future.
What are some examples of the new functionality
and capability GM wanted?
In addition to bringing our logistics systems back into
GM with our systems integrators, we are working on new
functionality in the areas of supplier capacity planning
and control, best total-landed-cost analysis tools, vehicle
visibility tools, and new metrics and reporting capabilities.
Also, were working on a new steel purchasing application.
GM has no boundaries geographical,
structural or organizational.
Andi Karaboutis is sitting in GMs
2007 Pontiac Solstice. Supply Chain Leader
/ October 2007
15
The i2 system is a decision-based tool set. You can go
into particular solutions and pick the modules that work
for you. So, my first point of call is i2 for several purchasing
and supply chain applications. I have found the i2 suite to
be the most robust at this point. But, if theres another
product that is best for us in a particular area, we certainly
will go with it. We hav