Supply chain resiliency and agility are manufacturing’s highest priorities in a world where disruption will become the new business normal, believes ResMed VP Brendan Mullins.
Q: What is your new role and focus?
A: I lead ResMed’s Global Manufacturing and Engineering teams with operations in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, and the United Sates. My role is to ensure a resilient, distributed manufacturing network, safe and efficient operations, and the delivery of high-quality medical devices to customers and patients.
Q: What are the most pressing issues facing the manufacturing today?
A: Ensuring resilient and agile supply chains should be the highest order priority for manufacturers. The most recent challenges – electronic component and certain raw material shortages; international trade tensions and tariffs; the rolling, crippling effect of COVID-19 – will be replaced by new disruptions. Manufacturers should expect disruption to be business as usual and so ensure resilience is at the core of supply chain design.
Q: What is the most important corporate initiative you are involved in?
A: ResMed is a world leading connected healthcare company with 10M+ cloud-connectable devices in market. We are working to digitize our supply chain from patients and customers, back through distribution, in-market and remote manufacturing sites, planning and logistics, to suppliers. We have, of course, a varying level of digital maturity across the supply chain. To prioritize investments, we are taking a future-back view of business models, channels, and supply networks, and prioritizing those digitization initiatives which best serve customers and enable the business.
Q: What are the most important leadership qualities for the future?
A: I consider the important qualities of leaders in any field to be the courage to embrace change, to care about their people, to be calm in rapidly evolving circumstances, to be curious to seek out new technologies and better approaches to business, and to be humble enough to know we haven’t got all the answers.
Q: What are the greatest opportunities for manufacturers over the next five years?
A: With respect to people, travel restrictions have forced us to be open-minded and creative about how we connect, deploy, and support distributed teams. The forced learnings about effective remote working create opportunities for us to think more globally about talent recruitment and leverage.
Q: What is your favorite activity outside work?
A: I’m a lifelong mid- to long-distance runner. It’s been particularly important through 2020 for health and balance. I’m now looking forward to organized races starting again in 202…?
Brendan Mullins
Title: Vice President, Global Manufacturing & Engineering
Company:ResMed
HQ: San Diego, CA
People: 7,500 Employees
Revenues: $3.0 Billion (2020)
Industry: Medical Devices
Web: www.resmed.com