The Procurement Council

Jorge is originally from Spain where he graduated as an engineer in the fields of Telecommunications and also in Computer Science and Information Technology Management with the University of Catalunya. 

Jorge has a wide international experience of more than 20 years in scope of Procurement and Supply Chain Management. He initiated his career in Spain and evolved towards leadership roles in the field of strategy, business  transformation and performance management in the Center of Excellence of Vodafone Group in Germany and UK.

Jorge is passionate about Procurement, Supply Chain Management and Business Transformation. Over the last years Jorge has been leading and developing international and multicultural teams in the field of Strategic Procurement and Supply Chain Management He was instrumental steering the centralization of procurement operations of a major Telecommunications Group as Vodafone across Europe and AMAP.

Jorge also led the transformation of procurement of Maxis Broadband in Malaysia developing team capabilities for strategic procurement while enhancing the strategic impact and added value of procurement. Since May 2019 Jorge is leading SCM and Procurement operations for devices and IoT as Vice President of Group Procurement at Telenor Group.

Nowadays Jorge is s a well-known procurement leader in Europe and in Asia Pacific. He was recently awarded by CIPS as “Procurement and Supply Chain Management Professional of the year 2019 in Asia as well as shortlisted to the categories of Procurement Leader, Transformation and Excellence by Procurement Leaders in 2018.

Chee Chiew has more than 15+ years of experience in consulting and operations role. Primary focus on procurement, working with C-level executives on procurement and supply chain organization strategy, and cost efficiency improvement program.

He has a track record of driving large-scale transformation and strategic sourcing programs across Asia, ANZ and the USA.

Currently, he is the Vice President in Kearney and is the Procurement Lead for the Strategic Operations practice in South East Asia.

Rumen is a CIPS certified (MCIPS) Procurement and Supply Chain Professional and has 13+ years of Local and International experiences across different industries.

He was born and grown up in Bangladesh. He graduated in Computing and Information System (CIS) and also completed his MBA in Marketing.

Rumen is passionate about the value procurement can bring to the business, supply chain management and transformation through digitization.

Over the last decade he has been playing key roles in the areas of strategic category management, transformation and digitalization of Procurement in the major Multinational Companies i.e. Novartis, Telenor, Veon, and Maxis across Asia.

Nowadays he is evolving towards leadership roles in the transformation of Global Procurement Team of Telenor Group that encompass with people leadership, strategic category management, modernization of core capabilities and new digital transformation.

Michael is passionate about the digital future of procurement. He has more than 25 years of international experience in industry line management and management consulting roles. Michael is recognized for delivering large scale business transformation, sustainable results and award-winning innovation.

He is the Co-Founder & CEO, akirolabs and was formerly a Senior Partner from Roland Berger. He has worked with major companies such as KPMG, Vodafone Group and Capgemini Invent.

Michael graduated with a Master of Business Administration from Open University Business School, UK and holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Bochum, Germany.

In 2018, he was the Finalist for Best Consulting Project in Procurement Leaders, World Procurement Awards.

Kobu is the Head of Procurement, SRM in Samsung C&T Corporation. He is a very passionate procurement and SCM professional.

Kobu has spent 35 years with globally renowned companies such as Samsung C&T Corporation, Rio Tinto, Keppel Infrastructure (Keppel Seghers) and Jacobs.

He has a wealth of procurement experience in infrastructure projects such as underground metro, road tunnels, power plants, waste-to-energy plants, solar plants, LNG plants, high-tech manufacturing plants, water reclamation plants and high rise buildings.

Kobu has acquired various procurement & commercial credentials from internationally established organization, including:

• FCIPS (Chartered) - CIPS,UK.
• CPSM & CPSD - ISM, USA.
• SRME & CCME - World Commercial & Contracting (IACCM).
• Chartered Marketer – Chartered Institute of Marketing, UK.

He has been accorded various awards and recognition, including:

• Winner - CIPS Asia Supply Management 2020 (Leader of the Year)
• Finalist – World Procurement Award 2020 (Procurement Leader)

Ramesh is the Head of Procurement for Philips APAC, India & Japan. His organization is responsible to fuel profitability and growth in the region through strong strategic relationships, providing procurement insight, innovative thought leadership, and direction to transform the value offering of the Philips businesses. A key part of his responsibility is to develop and drive multi-year Procurement strategies and initiatives at various levels with respect to key policy decisions and resolution of high impact issues.

Prior to Philips, Ramesh spent the better part of his career transforming and running Supply Chain and Procurement organisations in companies such as Hewlett Packard, Motorola and Hughes Software Systems. He started his career with the Indian Armed Forces as a commissioned officer. Ramesh has worked in senior leadership positions with P&L responsibilties both in general management and supply chain development capacities in Europe, Middle East, South East Asia and Asia Pacific and Japan regions.

Ramesh is a thought leader in Procurement and Supply Chain and makes valuable contribution to the industry by speaking in various professional procurement forums. He has published various white papers on Strategic Sourcing and supplier management and is an Advisor to the PSB Academy Singapore as a part of the Science and Advisory Panel.

Ramesh holds Executive certifications in Export Marketing from Indian Institute of Foreign Trade and holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Export Management and a degree from University of Delhi.

Philip is Vice President of IBM global procurement.  Philip brings extensive experience in all aspects of supply chain management, including supply chain strategy and operations, planning, supply assurance, strategic sourcing, global logistics, procurement engineering, as well as supply chain outsourcing and consulting services.

Philip is responsible from end to end procurement from source to pay in the area of services and general procurement. To support and enable IBM’s cognitive solution and cloud business for all business units in all the countries of Asia Pacific. His AP procurement team is using agile way of working, co-located with internal stakeholders, partnering with external suppliers, bringing supplier enabled innovation into IBM’s offering solutions.

Continuously driving procurement transformation, implementing all new era technologies, ie. Cognitive, Block Chain, Data Analytics, IOT, etc. to become cognitive and digitalized world class procurement.

Philip has 20+ years supply chain management, finance, global program management experience, across a range of industries including consumers, manufacturing, and IT.

Philip worked in various areas of finance, logistics, planning, supply assurance and procurement engineering. He spent most of his time in global procurement as the sourcing manager, executive assistant to CPO, global commodity council chair, general manager, director and vice president. Part of his procurement experience, he provided procurement outsourcing and consulting services to more than 20 external customers.

Philip holds MBA in University of Management and Technology. He obtained a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Design in Shanxi Science and Technology University.

Philip published “ China Sourcing “ in Germany Magazine in 2006.  He is also certified instructor for ITC (international Trading Center) procurement professional.

Terence is currently with Geodis Supply Chain Optimization as their CPO, Asia Pacific – responsible for Transformational Changes and leadership in pioneering new products and services (e.g. Procurement Advisory Services in GSCO). Known to be Resourceful, Entrepreneurial and Creative subject matter expert in Supply Chain, Sourcing & Procurement and Strategy Development, focusing on leadership in organizational change transformation management, M&A, business start-ups and developed pioneering niched processes (including consortium-buying and LCCS) with light-house successes globally through strong commercial acumen and excellent stakeholders-to-market engagements in the last 20+ years across different industrial verticals (e.g. FMCG, Consumer Electronics, Semicon, Logistics, Healthcare, Aerospace and Defense).

Gerard is the Founder and CEO of GMS. Together with his team at GMS, he leads procurement managed services enabled through a proprietary digital and innovation platform.

A consummate leader, he brings 17+ years of Local and International consultancy and procurement experiences across different industries. Prior to setting up GMS, Gerard was the Procurement Advisory Head for KPMG in Singapore. He was also a founding Director of KPMG’s Digital + Innovation department (KPMG’s Digital Village) where he specialised in data analytics and building digital solutions.

Gerard has been instrumental to supporting large MNCs and Singapore enterprises in the areas of strategic category management, transformation and digitalization of Procurement including CIMB, SIA, Dole, Air Liquide, CDG, GOJEK, Vodafone Procurement Company and more.

He is passionate about the value procurement brings to businesses and unlocking actionable insights leveraging data analytics.

Gerard’s vision is to build connected businesses and to help organizations digitally transform and innovate through harnessing new technologies to digitise business operations.

Tiow is currently the Head of Procurement for the JCAP region, accountable for all indirect sourcing teams strategies and operations across Japan, China and Asia Pacific cluster markets. 

Before joining MSD, Tiow was the global procurement director for Diageo, based out of Singapore and led end to end procurement (supply/direct materials, marketing/commercial and indirects/overheads categories) for the teams across Asia Pacific.  Tiow also led the best cost country sourcing agenda (BCCS) for Diageo globally and was instrumental in the implementation of the solution for Diageo.

 He built his career in Diageo through a succession of procurement roles, heading up procurement teams across SEA markets and was also the pioneering member of marketing procurement for the region.  Prior to Diageo, Tiow led the regional packaging and ingredients category for Philip Morris across Asia Pac manufacturing affiliates.

Tiow is a trained engineer with a Bachelor’s degree in electrical power engineering and a certified ISO 9001:2000 lead auditor.  Tiow is also a current committee member of Supply Chain Asia’s Procurement Council aimed at progressing the function across industries.

Sebastian Chua started his procurement career with Hewlett Packard/Agilent Technologies as their Country Manager for India, Singapore, Thailand & the Philippines before he took on the portfolio as the Regional Procurement Manager. Sebastian then moved on to join Microsoft & Alcatel-Lucent as Head of Procurement to transform their procurement organization in the Asia Pacific region.

In 2014, he took on a new challenge to transform the public procurement at the Health Promotion Board (HPB), a statutory board under the Ministry of Health, Singapore. He reports to CEO, HPB in his current role as the Head of Procurement.

Sebastian was conferred the (a) 2021 Asia Procurement Leader Award at the China Procurement Success Summit, (b) 2019 APAC Procurement Leader Award by The Procurement Leaders in UK, (c) 2018 Public Service Innovation Champion Award by The Prime Minister Office, Singapore, (d) 2017 Asia Supply Management Award by CIPS in the UK and (e) 2017 Supply Chain Professional of the Year by The Supply Chain Asia. In 2019 & 2021, he also led his team to win 4 Asia Awards - Most Improved Procurement Operation, Transformation, Best Public Procurement Project and Supplier Collaboration.

In 2020, he was voted by Supply Chain Digital as one of the top 10 Procurement Executives Worldwide.

https://www-supplychaindigital-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.supplychaindigital.com/top10/top-10-procurement-executives-worldwide?amp

The World Business Research had interviewed him on various procurement topics ranging from procurement leadership, innovation, transformation, digitalization, etc. His procurement papers (a) “Transformative THINKING. Transformative DOING”, (b) “Questioning the Value of Procurement”, (c) “Can Innovation Go With Procurement?” and (d) “From Procurement Gatekeeper to Business Enabler” was published at the a) 2017 Journal of Public Procurement (USA), b) Supply Chain Asia (July 2017) and c) Asia CIO Outlook (Dec 2016).

Sebastian was the former Chairperson for The Supply Chain & Procurement Council under Supply Chain Asia. He continues to sit as an advisory member of the Association for International Procurement Technology and Standards (AIPTS).

Chee Kin is currently the Vice President of Procurement for Singapore Post.

His last engagement in the Deutsche Post DHL (DPDHL) group saw him in leading positions, firstly to establish the Regional Procurement network in Asia Pacific, followed by his last role as VP, Global Head of Procurement Organisation, Standards & Tools.

In his regional role, Chee Kin established the operational plans for implementing the newly created Corporate Procurement function in Asia Pacific. He went on to implement the plans by recruiting and organising resources to fill the key positions in the countries and regional office, and introduced new Procurement processes and standards to support the rapidly growing business in Asia Pacific.

From a regional role, Chee Kin went on to take up a global position to develop, implement and manage the standardised toolsets of DPDHL Procurement. This covered the policies, processes, organisation standards and IT platforms of ePurchasing, eSourcing, Business Intelligence, Spend Analytics and supplier management. His other responsibilities included the initiation and management of strategic programs such as the Group-wide initiative of “Purchasing Compliance”, the transformation of Operational Buying into service centres, and the coordinated approach of skills development for Procurement professionals.

Prior and after DPDHL, Chee Kin spent almost 12 years in consulting to local companies on management topics, mostly on operations management and strategic business planning.

Peter Woon  is a senior Management Executive with proven track record in Greenfield startup experience. Having started up Supply Chain Solutions and Fulfilment centres in Singapore, Malaysia and China with Modus Media International. He was also part of the pioneer leadership to open the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort. Peter is an active practitioner of Supply Chain Management, Spend Management, Global Sourcing, Strategic Procurement, and Supplier Relationship Management. Project Management. Strategic Management for High Tech as well as Service Industries.