James Melucci Email & Phone Number

Chicago, Il, Us

New York, Ny, Us

With a team of three directs, spearheaded a transformative shift in North American Insights, transitioning from reactive support to a proactive, insights-driven powerhouse. This overhaul empowered stakeholders with clear, compelling narratives extracted from complex data, democratized insights across categories, locations, and accounts and optimized BI deployment to tackle critical business challenges head-on leading an over 50% improvement in insights utilization across commercial teams.

Chicago, Il, Us

Strategic partner to Albertsons providing one voice for end to end Planning, Strategy & Execution by serving as single point of contact for Business Unit, Field Team and Customer. Conducted Category Steward business reviews and served as category negotiation lead. With a $400M category portfolio, drove results for Albertsons and Kraft Heinz through strong collaboration with internal stakeholders - RMX/Finance, Trade Marketing and Category Leadership teams – with the goal to ensure execution behind the most optimal ROI initiatives for all parties while staying within prescribed budgets. Leveraged data & insights to positively impact business results via on-going updates on business trends, competitive activity, customer specific strategy changes, key marketplace updates and other business-related activities to internal & external key stakeholders.

Chicago, Il, Us

With a team of seven, led and advanced Kraft Heinz Category leadership capabilities to drive performance and growth for both Kraft Heinz and Ahold Delhaize while serving as primary liaison back to Corporate & Business Unit Category Leadership teams. Additional responsibilities included - providing broad insights to support customer initiatives, leading Customer category reviews and assessment, aisle reinventions, identifying opportunities and leading Category Leadership team to implement solutions at retail, understanding the competitive marketplace in which Kraft Heinz and customers operate, participating and developing material for Top to Top/JBP meetings with key customers, communicating insights and learnings to a wide variety of audiences and leading the goal setting and development of the team to continue to elevate their skills and talent.

Chicago, Il, Us

Provide complete customer and shopper research project support through identification of appropriate research objectives, design and execution of planned projects. Direct the interpretation, use, and implications of consumer, marketplace, and environmental information to improve business decisions and customer knowledge base for future strategic planning. With a team of three directs, customize and localize industry insights to create customer-relevant solutions, sell-in stories, and highlight opportunities for customer activation in partnership with business units. Ensure that conclusions and recommendations for all research conducted is clearly communicated, bringing conclusions of research studies directly to bear on the customer business issues and opportunities. Provide leadership into and manage spend for the development of new, improved and/or more cost effective research tools, method, and process while utilizing this new knowledge to influence business and decision making.

Rosemont, Il, Us

Collaborated with the Category Management team to design, develop and implement best in class methodology towards category strategy including the creation of category plans and joint business planning activities. Worked closely with the Category teams across the organization, driving the development and achievement of strategic growth initiatives while serving as subject matter expert in a consultative role across the organization. Provided project management leadership and oversight for the development/implementation of assigned projects in order to drive key milestones and adoption.

Rosemont, Il, Us

Oversaw $200M in replenishment spend activities for assigned divisions and related staff. Managed and coached team of 26 directs to drive consistent processes and procedures while managing performance results against established divisional KPI goals. Directed and coordinated the day-to-day activities of staff in order to achieve all inventory management expectations including service level, on hand inventory, cost accuracy, spoilage and reserve dollars. Collaborated with key areas of the business – Logistics, Operations Category Management, Finance - to maximize growth and profit opportunities tied to replenishment.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

Managed over $40M in assigned category lines across the Electrical department. Responsible for forecasting sales and margin plans for assigned lines (annually and monthly) through coordination with outside vendors, use of historical data, seasonal trending and overall knowledge of the business. Negotiated, selected, and implemented new merchandise programs to maximize sales and profits for the cooperative and its retailers. Developed advertising strategies and evaluated wholesale and retail competitors’ strategies to ensure viability. Engaged and partnered with global sourcing to develop and deliver cost reduction savings from alternative sources.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

Oversaw over $300M in corporate replenishment and inventory purchasing activities in addition to business processes, systems and training for Power Tools, Hardware and Lumber departments. Dotted line reporting relationship for ten team members including Inventory Planners, Senior Planners and Import Planners who were responsible for the demand forecasting and purchasing needs across three departments. Subject matter expert for all S&OP planning which ensured cross-functional goal achievement and inventory planning integration. Direct accountability for identifying process gaps and best practice enhancements for all key supply chain and planning processes in order to drive sales, margin, turnover and service level goals.

Chicago, Illinois, Us

Managed six direct reports including Inventory Planners, Senior Planners and Import Planners across two departments who were responsible for all demand forecasting and purchasing needs. Oversaw over $200M in corporate replenishment and inventory-purchasing activities in addition to business processes, systems and training for the Plumbing and Paint departments. Led all S&OP planning between the merchandising sales team and inventory team including reviewing performance against metrics, creating future sales forecasts and translating them in to inventory needs.

Lake Forest, Il, Us

Responsible for development and management of S&OP process for over $150M in sales across two product categories. Dotted line reporting relationship with three plant managers and three master schedulers who coordinated on the sales plan, capacity plan and production plan to fulfill demand needs. Managed the S&OP process for Hefty Zoo Pals at 2 plants in the US (Belvidere, IL and Cleveland, OH) and an outsourced supplier in Shanghai, China. Forecasted and planned container loads for outsourced products while accounting for the extended lead times, cross-docking and repack operations upon arrival from China. Created, managed and updated the S&OP for the Hefty-branded consumer cup manufacturing operations located in Guadalajara, Mexico.

North Reading, Ma, Us

Forecasted, purchased and managed $250M worldwide spares inventory in support of a variety of high-volume semiconductor test equipment platforms critical to uptime (customers included Motorola, Intel, TI and AMD). Integrated with project teams to gain the appropriate product knowledge for managing inventory pipeline used to meet on-time delivery and Mean Time to Repair objectives. Responsible for Engineering Change Order rework planning, budget management, asset utilization and participation on quality improvement teams through use of TQM concepts.

Santa Clara, Ca, Us

Developed and managed supply chain for outsourcing of semiconductor equipment at a modular level through audits of multiple supplier sites and contract negotiation with an emphasis on cost reduction.

Mba, Management

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Logistics, Materials, And Supply Chain Management

Bs, Logistics, Materials, And Supply Chain Management