Simon Woodhouse – Operations Director

Simon has been a procurement professional since his employment at Ford. He had responsibility for diverse commodities such as prototype engines, logistics, IT and labour. Simon then worked on the privatisation of British Rail. In 1995 he was drafted back to Ford to manage the European leg of the “Ford 2000” initiative. This restructured the communications platforms and labour resource utilisation.

In 1996 Simon helped launch Europe’s first managed service platform. This provided a strategic lead to Ford in the usage of its temporary and contract labour resource.

During this time the supply base was reduced from 125 agencies down to 20. This whilst improving the service and quality of individuals being supplied to the client. Savings were achieved in excess of 10% year on year.

"To help move the supply base forward we implemented a collaborative approach with the tier one suppliers. This brought competitors into the strategy forums for the first time. It was interesting to see how the group moved from extreme caution to open discussion on process improvement and service enhancement. We all built on this foundation of trust. I believe we got it right, but more importantly so do the suppliers"