Kai Stark Email & Phone Number

Sacramento, California, Us

I lead Starwest's procurement team in managing SWB’s entire breadth of spices, herbs, teas, essential oils, ingredients, and packaging. This is made up of 467 unique agricultural commodities (90% organic) from 280 vendors in over 45 countries and equates to over 920 purchased raw materials and 700+ purchased packaging, merchandising, and accessory items. - Developed and currently executing a plan to reduce SWB’s wholesale stock out rate by a factor of 4 by end of 2024. This is being accomplished by syncing contracting with harvest cycles, utilizing forward looking planning tools (MRP and forecasting), revamping SWB’s supplier base and implementing root cause analysis for weekly out of stock tracking.- Turned over 65% of SWB’s supply base in 18 months. Over 40% of suppliers were replaced with GFSI certified suppliers.- Implemented SWB’s first MRP system in just 10 weeks.- Vetted and corrected all BOMs, routings, lead times, batch size rules, planning factors and safety stocks. - Created live, real-time tools used by the production planning and purchasing teams for interacting with MRP data daily.- Implemented SWB’s first forecasting system in 4 weeks - a regression based forecast modeling package for 3,682 sellable skus that includes event modeling.- Pushed processing of over 1 million lbs annually back to GFSI certified suppliers at origin, resulting in estimated cost savings of $989k per year.- Reduced inventory by over $5 million following the post-COVID demand bubble to right size capital usage requirements.- Developed a process to project 13-week purchase order cash requirements that encompasses acquisition costs, ocean freight, customs clearance costs, tariffs, and inland freight charges.- Participated in meetings with key customers to provide regular updates on commodity markets, the changing regulatory landscape, as well as address quality problems as required.

Norway, Ia, Us

As Director of Purchasing, I led a team of 9 in managing $78 million (13.2 million lbs, 250+ unique commodities and 896 skus) in annual acquisitions from 194 suppliers in over 40 countries. This covered Frontier’s entire breadth of spices, herbs, teas, essential oils, vanilla and ingredients. Additionally, I oversaw the purchasing of $14 million of retail products from other leading brands in the natural products industry (298 vendors, 7,500+ skus) for Frontier’s direct distribution business.- Limited Frontier’s indexed cost of spices to a 21% increase during the period of 2007-2020 versus an indexed MINTEC industry increase of 66%. This was accomplished by creating a more direct supply chain that cut out “coyotes” and non-value add middlemen, allowing savings to be split between Frontier and long-term grower partners at origin.- Developed, managed and executed Frontier’s vanilla purchasing strategy through the largest vanilla crisis in history. Limited Frontier’s peak price increase to only 590% of our FY08 cost basis vs a MINTEC market peak of 1471% by anticipating vanilla’s long-term boom/bust crop cycle.- Managed a 70% sales volume increase during COVID-19 pandemic without any major gaps in raw material supply while simultaneously implementing a new ERP system.- Helped expand Frontier’s supply chain sustainability program, Well Earth, to encompass 72% of all agricultural purchases (229 raw materials from 54 suppliers) in FY20.- Worked to help initiate 52 business building and community support projects ($2.1 million) with Well Earth suppliers between 2007 and 2020.- Designed and implemented reporting mechanisms for root cause analysis of and reason code tracking for stock outs, useable for vendor report carding.- Traveled extensively to 27 countries, sourcing spices, herbs, teas, ingredients and essential oils, regularly spending 8-12 weeks per year overseas working with grower partners since 2006.

Norway, Ia, Us

During my tenure as Purchasing Manager, I led a team of 5 and oversaw all aspects of commodity related procurement for Frontier’s Food & Flavors division. This constituted an annual spend of $49 million, broken into 159 distinct commodities (653 skus – spices/herbs/vanilla/teas/ingredients).- Optimized safety stocks for raw materials based on supply risk, annual sales $ impact, production schedule impact and carry cost factors; this resulted in fewer raw material supply gaps without increased inventory $ levels.- Assisted in rolling out version 2.0 of Frontier’s Well Earth sustainability program, which moved from a binary certification scheme to a good/better/best model to promote continuous improvement of suppliers.- Helped take Frontier’s Well Earth 1.0 program from inception in 2007, to covering 51% of all Food & Flavors agricultural commodities in 2018.- Initiated and managed the setup of Frontier’s co-packing with a key supply partner in Turkey.- Managed long term contracting against complex crop cycles and unsophisticated supply chains.- Helped win Whole Food’s Supplier of the Year award twice (2013 and 2016) via Frontier’s differentiated sourcing model.- Pushed Frontier’s steam sterilization food safety initiative forward to include 89% of all spices and herbs (including garlic).

Norway, Ia, Us

As Commodity Manager, I worked with 2 direct reports and was responsible for sourcing, contract negotiation and procurement of all organic and conventional spices, ingredients and vanilla related commodities.- Worked with Transfair USA (now Fair Trade USA) to bring the first Fair Trade spices and vanilla into the United States (2009).- Managed over $5.3 million in international purchases annually, $13.8 million in total (domestic and international).- Reduced inbound quality non-conformance rate for organic spices by 41% between 2006 and 2010, leading to lower stock out rates to customers.- Tasked with developing premium sources for ethically produced and ecologically sustainable spices and ingredients via Frontier’s Well Earth program.

Norway, Ia, Us

While holding the position of Production Planning Manager, I led a team of 4 direct reports and was responsible for the scheduling of nearly 3,000 unique manufactured items across 10 production lines.- Managed the operational piece of three major product line introductions and was able to maintain a service level of 100%, even when demand exceeded initial forecasts by a factor of 20.- Coordinated the implementation of best by dates across all Food & Flavors product lines.- Developed a new and more useable capacity planning report from scratch.- Participated in inventory reduction teams to reduce excess inventory by $395,000 in FY 05.

Norway, Ia, Us

As a Production Planner, I created and maintained schedules for multiple production lines and managed Frontier’s contract manufacturing activities from Sept. 2002 - Sept. 2003.- Instituted scheduling processes for Frontier’s seasoning mix category; alleviated shelf life issues and reduced high stock out rates to zero for over 10 consecutive months.- Effected a new scheduling methodology for a sequence limited machine (due to color, taste profile, allergens) that reduced the number of units missing the sequence (thus running on alternate, more expensive lines) by over 80%.- Initiated and carried out multiple studies to optimize ERP system planning factors and settings.- Coordinated the verification and shipment of all raw material inventories during the moving of Frontier’s California-based Aura Cacia manufacturing plant back to Iowa, limiting total production shutdown to only 15 days.- Participated in inventory reduction teams to reduce excess inventory by over $500,000 in FY 04.

Norway, Ia, Us

As a Buyer, I released and managed purchase orders for teas, food ingredients, essential oils and packaging, ensuring that materials arrived in time to meet production schedule demands.- Held responsibility for tea contracting and MRO items.- Helped to test purchasing modules during transition to PRMS ERP system.

Mba

Ba, Business Management - Supply Chain