Passion
My name is Tom Henderix and I founded Lemantis in 2013. My passion for Supply Chain Management however, was born in 2002, when I started working as a production planner for Klaps, a family owned concrete products producer in Belgium. I remember the HR director at that time saying: “you will be the one who will always get the beating, from sales when products are not available, from production if you plan to many changeovers…, are you really up to that?”
I took the challenge and have never regretted it. On the contrary, I have always enjoyed being in supply chain functions, where I could act as a spider in the web, being in contact with all company divisions.
International
In 2005 Klaps was acquired by the Irish building materials multinational CRH. Within this group, I had the opportunity to work with colleagues from all over the world, and acquire international experience working as Planning Manager for Marlux (a CRH company) both in Belgium and in France.
And like the web of the spider grows, I also expanded my expertise beyond production planning. In later roles as Purchase Manager and Supply Chain Manager, I completed my knowledge and experience in different areas of supply chain management: forecasting, demand planning, Sales & Operations Planning, production scheduling, purchasing, inventory management, logistics and transport. In these roles I also managed ERP implementation and digitalisation projects.
On a more personal note, I actually don’t like spiders at all…
International
In 2005 Klaps was acquired by the Irish building materials multinational CRH. Within this group, I had the opportunity to work with colleagues from all over the world, and acquire international experience working as Planning Manager for Marlux (a CRH company) both in Belgium and in France.
And like the web of the spider grows, I also expanded my expertise beyond production planning. In later roles as Purchase Manager and Supply Chain Manager, I completed my knowledge and experience in different areas of supply chain management: forecasting, demand planning, Sales & Operations Planning, production scheduling, purchasing, inventory management, logistics and transport.In these roles I also managed ERP implementation and digitalisation projects.
On a more personal note, I actually don’t like spiders at all…
Learn
I was told I was going to get the beating, and that is exactly what happened from time to time. When making decisions for your supply chain, you cannot satisfy everyone. But you owe it to your company to make the best decisions possible, based on the facts and figures you have available at that moment.
In order to make these decisions, I rely on theoretical and practical models I have studied, not only during my Business Engineering studies at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, but also later on in my career. I am a strong believer of lifelong learning, so I obtained a postgraduate Operations Management, an APICS certificate for Production and Inventory Management and the Demand Driven Planner and Leader Certificate, issued by the Demand Driven Institute.
By passing on to my customers the concepts that I have learned over the years, I hope to demonstrate that efficiently managing the entire chain of processes from buying raw material to delivering finished product is crucial for financial success, not only in large multinationals, but also in small and mid-sized companies.
Ideal mix
The theoretical background I acquired during my studies, combined with almost 20 years of practical experience in supply chain management, being that spider in the web, are an ideal mix to support companies in optimising their supply chain and inventory management.
I help companies keeping their inventory under control, whilst increasing customer service level.
Does that mean you can do without inventory? I don’t think so.
Does that mean you will always satisfy every customer? Not possible either…
But my vision is that optimising your supply chain with a clear focus on customer service,
creates value, not only for your customer,
but in the end, it will also lead to customer loyalty, increased sales and profit for your company.
Get in touch
If you want to learn more about how we can help to implement or improve supply chain processes in your company, don’t hesitate to reach out by mail at tom.henderix@lemantis.ch and we can plan a free introductory conversation.