Murray Smith Email & Phone Number

Leading an innovative agricultural crop protection business in the US and Canada.

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility & Achievement: While with Deere & Company, I had P&L responsibility (~$800M) for the global Baling & Mowing business including operations in Iowa, France, and Mexico, and managed up to 1,500 employees. I was commissioned by senior leadership to develop market intelligence, capitalizing on global market growth potential, penetrating new markets, launching new innovative products, improving quality, and driving EBIT to achieve acceptable levels of profitability. These efforts led to achieving competitive differentiation, launching significant new product lines, instituting Lean, and securing growth in the NA commercial Hay segment which resulted in the Chairman’s Award granted in 2017. AREAS OF ACHIEVEMENT• New Market Penetration• Market Share Capture• EBITDA Growth• Turnaround• Business Transformation• Cost Reduction• Profit Optimization• EBIT Growth

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility & Achievement: As Director of Manufacturing, I was responsible for in-country operational leadership, which included leading the installation of common processes throughout four existing operations and the creation of three new factories. I also led planning and implementation of an Enterprise campus. All of this required the creation of an enterprise strategy for manufacturing capacity, standardization of processes and equipment, and delivering a “campus” in TEDA (Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area) as well as a new facility in Harbin. The campus in TEDA included multiple new factories, an engineering center, and a shared services office. The entire process was completed in 3 years, on budget and without lost time injuries. As a result, I was promoted to Global Product Line Director, Baling and Mowing as a result of the efficiencies realized in construction and development of these new facilities.

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility & Achievement: I was in charge of up to 1,200 employees as I managed Production, Manufacturing Engineering, Quality, Supply Chain, and other functional areas. I was challenged to bolster employee engagement, increase capacity, and enhance productivity. I introduced Lean concepts to develop and nurture trust and respect between management and production, all the while developing a new factory master plan. As a result, employee engagement levels exceeded expectations and the factory achieved record sales and profitability. Three of my employees were also elevated to significant leadership positions. The results generated in this role led to my promotion to Director Manufacturing, China.

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility & Achievement: As the first Director of Ag Tactical Marketing in North America, I was tasked to develop a structure and organization to become more aligned and targeted in our go-to-market marketing activities. My responsibilities ultimately included providing leadership for advertising/promotion, incentives, order fulfillment administration, crop specialists, event management, dealer training, parts marketing, branch tactical marketing managers, and Deere Credit Finance liaisons. We established pilot programs targeting key customer segments aligning pricing, production planning, training, Product Specialists and product management. A significant amount of data was gathered to monitor the success of these programs. The programs led to an increase in sales, drove market share gains, and bolstered ~$4M in contribution margin. The processes and structures created are standard operating procedures today.

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility and Achievement: I was promoted by an Agricultural Division President to establish and implement an order fulfillment strategy for the Agricultural division to more effectively utilize assets while improving product availability. I was also challenged to provide common processes for our dealer channel and factories as well. We created a new forecasting process, established inventory targets, a standard set of metrics and a common process and system for ordering and order management of all Agricultural products sold in North America. We ultimately were able to better match supply with demand while becoming much easier to do business with. All in all, we consistently reduced inventory to sales ratios while increasing product availability and accomplished an inventory disinvestment of at least $500M. The processes and structure became a Standard Operating Procedure and Best Practice in the industry.

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility and Achievement: In this role I led the operations for Deere’s largest factory manufacturing $2.2B (retail value) in products. I managed 800 employees including operations, manufacturing engineering, quality engineering, and new product program management. Accomplishments included successfully launching two new products and the development and implementation of a redevelopment project. This project included the instituting of Lean Manufacturing, converting the assembly operations from a fixed paced line to a station build utilizing automated guided vehicles and converting from 95% manual weld to 88% robotic weld.

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility and Achievement: I was responsible for new product program management and leading the operations for Deere’s Small Row Crop Tractors (90-120hp, 7000 Series). I managed operations, manufacturing engineering, quality engineering, and new product program management. Accomplishments included the co-location of several functions to provide greater focus on the continuous improvement of products and processes and delivering enhanced profitability, partly driven by reducing R&D where we made a decision to leverage a common design from our factory in Germany.

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility and Achievement: As the first Master Process Pro for Deere’s operations in Waterloo, I was responsible for leading process improvement activities required to become a more customer focused organization. Accomplishments included delivering overhead reduction in our foundry, implementing a factory installed loader process, and facilitating a corporate project which created a team-based incentive plan for UAW employees which is largely the one in place today.

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility: I was responsible for all production planning, inbound and outbound logistics, and the management of third-party warehousing and bundling operations.

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility: I was responsible for wage payroll, accounts payable, forecasting, general accounting, financial analyses, and cost accounting.

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility and Achievement: I was responsible for providing production leadership for several Tillage products including a primaries department made up largely of tube cutting lasers, three different weld departments, and an assembly department. Accomplishments included significant improvements in on-time delivery, productivity and quality while reducing overall inventories.

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility and Achievement: I participated in a Senior Leadership sponsored project focused on the development and implementation of a new Tillage Order Fulfillment process. We ultimately implemented improvements that led to better availability to our customer, a reduced cycle time from order to delivery and reduced inventories. This project served as the foundation for the process later implemented by the Agricultural Division.

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility and Achievement: I was responsible for the Financial Analyses of all capital expenditures including new products, installing an Activity Based Costing system which resulted in a better understanding of cost drivers and more effective management of overall costs and was a team member of a Factory Master Plan project.

Moline, Il, Us

Scope of Responsibility: Participated in multiple procurement audits and led multiple perpetual inventory audits in the Construction and Agricultural divisions.

Global 2020 Program

Mba

Ba, Accounting