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ChainLink Research's Team includes some of the worlds leading experts in Supply Chain Management, advanced business models, research methodologies – and diverse perspectives.
Ann Grackin - Chief Executive Officer
For more than two decades, Ann Grackin has been on the frontlines of the Supply Chain Management technology and eCommerce frontier, leading global strategy and technology implementations in the high technology, semiconductor, automotive, textile, and apparel industries. Ms. Grackin has served in many capacities in this dynamic environment and worked on global supply chains strategies for some of the leading Fortune 500 firms, with assignments in Asia and Europe and the North America.
As a partner and cofounder of ChainLink Research, Ms. Grackin is responsible for leading the firms Supply Chain strategy. She comes to this position with a parallax view from seeing all angles of the supply chain problem-as an end-user implementer in a global fortune 100 firm, a technologist, a global consultant, an executive in a Supply Chain software firm, a columnist in the leading Supply Chain magazines, and one of the leading analysts in Supply Chain!
Her biography sets the stage for leading the charge at ChainLink's Research:
- Before coming to ChainLink Research, Ms. Grackin served as the Vice President of Supply Chain Strategy at AMR Research.
- Prior to ChainLink, Ms. Grackin was vice president of sales and marketing at Verilytics. She led sales and product management to meet the needs of clients in financial services and supply chain operations.
- Before joining Verilytics, Ms. Grackin served as executive vice president at Avicon, a Massachusetts based strategy and IT consulting firm. She co-founded the firm to help companies Web-enable their supply chains.
- Previously, Ms. Grackin was a Foundation Partner at Benchmarking Partners and led the Supply Chain practice. She worked with the leading technology providers to help create product and industry strategies for their Supply Chain products as well as leading end-user firms, creating supply chain technology visions.
- At Digital Equipment Corporation, Ms. Grackin led information technology organizations and projects throughout the world in Supply Chain, Logistics and Manufacturing including the first global implementation of i2 Technologies advanced planning software, as well as some of the leading packages in use today.
Ms. Grackin, a popular speaker and respected writer on supply chain management best practices and technology, is a graduate of the Harvard School of Executive Management and the Sloan School of Strategic Planning.
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Bill McBeath - Chief Research Officer
Bill McBeath leads ChainLink's research efforts, as well as the procurement, strategic sourcing, design collaboration, and online marketplaces practices. With more than 20 years of experience in a variety of roles as a business and technology researcher and consultant, high tech executive, and software architect, Mr. McBeath is recognized as a leading expert in extended-enterprise business models.
Before co-founding ChainLink Research, Mr. McBeath was Managing Director of Emerging Technologies at Benchmarking Partners/Surgency, where he formulated and executed successful go-to-market strategies for dozens of startups and established firms. His accomplishments provide a strong foundation for ChainLink's services:
- Research - Deep primary research, analysis, and publication of groundbreaking, frequently quoted papers on business-to-business integration, extended-enterprise business models, e-procurement best practices, online marketplaces, and supply chain optimization.
- Strategy - Conducted numerous CEO-team workshops on go-to-market strategies, positioning, partnerships, pricing, and organization strategies.
- ROI Models - Developed a number of different return-on-investment models to calculate ROI in areas as diverse as outsourced global strategic sourcing, design collaboration, e-procurement, and pricing automation.
- Technology Architecture - Leveraged more than 15 years as a software engineer to create 3-year IT roadmaps for F500 companies and architecture strategies for software and Internet firms.
Prior to joining Surgency, Mr. McBeath served as Director of Server Engineering at NEC Computer Systems, responsible for all server hardware and software development. Previously as Director of Networking, Performance and Systems Integration, Mr. McBeath grew NEC's communications and options business from nothing to over $75M within four years.
Earlier in his career, Mr. McBeath was the lead architect of Data General's CommServer multi-protocol messaging switch, as well as Wang's network architecture (WSN). He was a principal designer and developer of a wide variety of advanced software including a distributed OS communications system, SNA Mainframe emulator, virtual machine monitor, and numerous others.
Mr. McBeath is a popular speaker, having delivered keynote addresses and led panel discussions at various industry conferences. In addition to undergraduate work at Hampshire College, Mr. McBeath has completed graduate level studies in Digital Network Technologies at MIT and Microprogramming and Emulation at Northeastern University.
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Lonnie Childs - High Tech Supply Chain Management
Lonnie Childs brings 25 years of experience in Operations and Supply Chain management in a variety of manufacturing industries including electronics, defense, machining, and start-up operations. During his 10 year tenure at Dell Computer Corporation from 1991-2001, he served as Director of Demand/Supply Planning and Director of Portables Supply Chain Management for Americas Operations and held responsibility for designing, implementing, and managing many of Dell’s leading edge processes for demand/supply planning and supply chain management while the company engaged in explosive growth. Mr. Childs sponsored and actively engaged in the project management to implement demand planning, supply planning and shop floor control systems which were instrumental to Dell’s operational excellence. He also managed the successful transition of Portables manufacturing from the US to Dell’s Asian operations which resulted in significant cost savings. Since retiring from Dell in 2001, Mr. Childs has provided independent management consulting services to manufacturing companies.
Mr. Childs professional associations include serving as President, Director of Education, and Instructor for the Austin chapter of the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS).
Mr. Childs holds a Bachelors degree from the University of Texas at Austin and has done graduate work in Business Administration at St. Edward’s University.
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Sree Hameed - Demand Chain
Sree Hameed has over 15 years of experience in the area of applying technology- based solutions to improve business performance. He has played a number of key roles along the technology adoption lifecycle, from the research and design phase through to sales and implementation of solutions in Supply Chain, Product Lifecycle, and Customer Relationship Management/Marketing Automation processes. At ChainLink Research, he continues to contribute to their research publications and advise companies on performance management, technology selection and adoption strategies.
Mr. Hameed also currently serves in an advisory capacity to the Center for Intelligent Supply Networks at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is passionate about the role of education in advancing new concepts as well developing new skills to succeed in a world of increasing risk. He has experience developing and deploying large-scale training programs to align cross-functional processes across globally-distributed organizations.
In the past, he held senior positions at Marsh Risk Consulting, SAP Labs, and i2 Technologies. At Marsh, he worked on a number of projects focused on merging the areas of Risk Management with Operations to create new frameworks, metrics, and analytical models. At SAP Labs, he advised product teams on design and implementation strategies for SAP's solutions in Product Lifecycle Management, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain Risk Management. At i2, Mr. Hameed served in a variety of leadership roles bringing to market a number of technology-based innovations in supply chain that are considered best practices in industries like High Tech, Metals, Discrete Manufacturing, and Transportation industries.
Mr. Hameed hold a Bachelors degree in Marketing and Master Degree in Information Systems from the University of Texas at Arlington.
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