Upon graduating with a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering, I joined the Oil & Gas sector where I had the choice to pursue a role in either chemical engineering or supply chain management. I chose the supply chain domain as it acts as an interface between the two choices I had to make.

Faced by a volatile petrochemical market in 2017, I was tasked with the responsibility to make significant margin improvements with the objective of achieving better bottom line performance. I led a team which implemented multiple initiatives ranging from cost reduction, facility utilization to integrated value chain optimization. To achieve this, we started with a bottom-up workshop to identify such initiatives. Initiative owners were assigned and process flow was scripted out in a way so as to ensure that the initiatives were aligned and did not conflict at any point. Within 3 years, my team had achieved a 40% margin improvement of overall company, representing 10.5 Billion THB. 

I led the creation of a supply chain platform which was based on a roadmap to achieve the best in class supply chain management. The platform focuses on 3 areas: people competency and development, supply chain tools, and work processes for within SCM and across other functions. These are all built in with continuous improvement metrics. We included proper training programs for our supply chain analysts, improve work process to be more efficient and effective and built an extended roadmap to include more predictive analytics and automation to the relevant SCM tools.

There are more women studying Chemical Engineering and working in Oil and Gas sector today compared to the time when I started my career. In the last 20 years, I have witnessed a big change in how companies in Thailand, and generally in Asia as well, are promoting women for high level management positions, across industries. For PTT Group itself in the last 20 years, there has been a major increase from 0% of women in leadership positions to 20% today. I am happy with this trend as any position should be occupied by the best person available, regardless of their gender.

Companies can make these careers more attractive to women by showing these jobs are one of the most important positions in a company - most companies have material and supply costs as the biggest portion of COGS and this counts for big impact to a company’s performance. Supply chain management is very interesting, complex and challenging. It gives you a chance to connect with people across functions, and learn about the impact made across the business. 

I hope to write a white paper on the positive impact of good supply chain management in the petroleum and petrochemical industry and how to properly make it happen in the 21st century. Finding the time to do so would be the biggest challenge here!