Abstract

At the end of 2015 Laurent Madelaine was appointed the Head of Sears Holdings Global Sourcing SHGS the Hong Kong based subsidiary that provided merchandising global sourcing and testing facilities to American retail giant Sears Holding Corporation Laurent immediately received a clear mandate from SHC to optimize operations to eliminate waste and duplication and create an agile sourcing organization In February 2016 Laurent hired his former Tesco colleague Yasushi Yatchi Kumasegawa as a business analysis manager to find areas and methods of increasing efficiency within SHGS Laurent and Yatchi along with the other members of the leadership team restructured the organization in a manner that no employee at SHGS felt possible Announcing rationalization of SHGS as the goal the leadership team simplified the organizational structure and refocused resources in the right place reducing headcount from 890 in 2016 to 680 by February 2017 At the same time ambitious KPI targets on purchase savings and reduction in selling general and administrative spend were met The leadership team sought to continue their success in 2017 by completing a transformation to a nimble asset light organization that could anticipate market changes and the needs of SHC