MASON, Ohio—Forte, a supply chain company, says Steven J. Schumaker is its new director of consulting. Schumaker has more than 28 years of experience in supply chain management. At Forte, Schumaker will help lead the firm’s network and inventory optimization solutions within its growing consulting practice. With a volatile marketplace and the highly prominent need to minimize distribution costs and achieve higher levels of customer service, Forte is seeing an increase in demand for optimization solutions with many forward-looking companies taking the opportunity to strategically tune their networks and inventory to be more adaptable to inevitable changes.
Throughout his career, Schumaker has been involved in cost reduction initiatives based on network and inventory optimization. Cost reduction initiatives focusing on inventory deployment, operations costs and distribution costs are key to a fully successful network optimization process. His early work assisted in the movement of network optimization techniques from academia to business, which led to numerous engagements in regional and global supply chain optimization initiatives.
Most recently, Schumaker was a project director for Proudfoot Consulting Company, an international consulting firm. Prior to Proudfoot, Schumaker served in various management roles at the Hackett Group, a top-tier consulting organization specializing in developing technology solutions for finance, information technology, supply chain and human resources. At the Hackett Group, Schumaker led teams directly responsible for supply chain business development, sales and project management.
Schumaker also served as global logistics project leader at IMCOR, Inc., in Stamford, CT, where he was responsible for helping Eveready Battery streamline its worldwide logistics organization. In addition, he was director of supply chain integration and director of distribution at WR Grace, a $13 billion specialty chemical manufacturer and medical supply company. Schumaker began his career at General Electric in 1980 where he served in corporate and business units in various project management positions.