The day in the life a customer supply chain controller

Name

Sean Tovey

Age 

32

Job title

Customer supply chain controller

Company and location

I have worked at Oscar Mayer for over a decade now, having first spent some time here while on placement during university. We are a leading innovator of chilled meal solutions and are always looking to do something new or improve how we work with our customers, which is where I come in.

Education

I attended the University of Bath and was fortunate enough to obtain two degrees across my four years there, one in food science and another in human biology, so both have come in useful in my job.

Favourite food/drink

I’ve just come back from my honeymoon in Southeast Asia so anything from that region is a must, but also I don’t think much beats the comfort of a creamy pasta dish.

What inspired you to enter F&B?

I’ve always had an interest in science, and how it holds the answers to almost everything. I also have such fond memories of cooking and baking during my childhood and teens, and realised while I was studying for my food tech GCSE that food and science have such a strong connection.

But when I was training at university and learning more about the food industry and nutrition, I actually wanted to be a science teacher. It wasn’t until I started in a microbiology lab for a food manufacturer on a placement that I realised this was the right industry for me.

How did you get to where you are today?

I grew up not far from an Oscar Mayer manufacturing site, so it was always in my consciousness growing up. Then, once I was at university, I was sent to the same site for one of my training placements. Looking back, I probably should have realised I was meant to work here.

After graduating, I joined Oscar Mayer’s technical team, looking at everything from product quality standards all the way through to auditing the site. Then, I moved to London to work for the Sainsbury’s account to manage our relationship with them.

After four years there, I moved back towards Somerset and have now been in this role for around six years.

Tell us about your role

The food and beverage industry is great because you often end up specialising in a lot of different areas, so my role is a combination of anything you can think would be needed on the supply chain side of things.

I head up the customer supply chain team so that involves managing the portfolio of products we supply to seven major retailers, including their own brand products, to ensure that things run smoothly in the chain from when we produce the product, all the way through to it being in the fixtures for shoppers to buy.

I liaise with my counterparts at retailers to work on strategies around enhancing our KPIs, these include areas such as supplier service, days cover, availability and waste management.

I am also responsible for understanding the retail landscape, to see if there are any changes that we, at Oscar Mayer, need to know about. This help us to forecast what’s likely to happen over the coming weeks, months or even years to help us identify any growth opportunities or potential challenges we need to be aware of.

What does a typical day look like?

It’s an overused cliché but every day can be completely different given the breadth of my role. I could be dealing with Oscar Mayer’s customers, analysing what we could be doing differently or agreeing new contracts.

The role is great in that I often have to step back and look at the supply chain from end-to-end, from raw materials being bought to products being purchased by consumers. So each day I have to keep the entire supply chain in mind when making any decision, and there is always something new which comes along you need to consider.

Chilled meals are a complex product. It’s a category where pace is required to take raw materials and ingredients, liaise with multiple suppliers and produce high-quality products consistently. 

When you’re having a bad day, what cheers you up?

I’m generally quite a positive person and am very fortunate to not have too many bad days. I try to ensure that each day I have that feeling of getting something done, that we have found a solution to the problem we may be having or, if not, that I have done everything that I can do to deliver good results for the business.

But I’m also a secret gamer, so if I need cheering up, I usually play something retro like a Star Wars or Call of Duty game, and I’m still playing Runescape online with the same people I have done for the past decade.

What’s your favourite part about the food sector?

Businesses in the food sector have an enormous impact on people’s lives – there are so many different consumption occasions we can influence. A lot of people don’t know about their own health, or they do but they aren’t sure how to get more or less of something specific into or out of their diets. That’s where we are responsible for doing all we can to meet people’s dietary needs. And the convenience of chilled meals means we are giving people time back, which is an amazing thing.

We also have a large footprint as food and drink businesses, so we have lots of opportunities to lead the way by coming up with innovative ways to reduce our environmental impact.

If you could change one thing about the F&B sector what would it be?

There are so many opportunities in the sector to collaborate more. Much of the time manufacturers keep what they’re working on behind closed doors. Of course, sometimes this is necessary, but collaboration, ultimately, will most likely result in better solutions for consumers, whether that’s a better final product or streamlining our processes, making them more efficient and providing even greater value to people.

That collaboration would also address the other key issue facing the sector – food waste. Together, we can discuss how we can make a real change to make entire industry more sustainable and reduce waste.

What’s next for you/what’s the dream?

I’ve been really fortunate to have had the opportunity to work in this sector for over a decade with Oscar Mayer. In terms of what’s next, I’d love to look after our entire supply chain from the very start to the very end, so from purchasing raw materials all the way through to them being sold to consumers.

I’ve always had mentoring positions whether that be at university or work, and now I’d love to use my experience and gained knowledge to support other businesses in the sector. That may be helping to streamline their supply chains to make them more efficient or looking at how they can meet waste targets through working collaboratively. That’s what I hope is next for me!