Michael Ahner - founder and Managing Director of Malogs-Consulting - can look back to almost 30 years of logistics management within three different industries: Pharma, Automotive and FMCG (Games). Known as a pragmatic and hands on leader Michael has been leading multi-cultural smaller and bigger teams as Warehouse Manager, Logistics Project Manager, Senior Contract Manager, Head of Logistics Europe and Global Director Logistics.

Within his first role as warehouse manager, Michael’s analytical skills were key to improve the performance of a new built Pharma wholesaler warehouse both on cost and quality by 35% automating the PPS operation. Moving on to the next role at a tier 1 automotive supplier, Michael was a key contributor to set up global spare parts logistics from the spare parts centre in South Germany. In addition, he supported the local manufacturing plant supply with parts from the external warehouse. Further Michael supported special projects such as logistics cost calculation and introduction of just in sequence logistics to one of the leading car manufacturers.

Moving on to the games industry, Michael began as Senior Contract Manager, embedded within the 3PL WH to coordinate the interest of all parties. Taking back the outsourced transport management in house, this was within a short time leading to major cost reduction and at same time a steadily reduced loss ratio, by orchestrating all involved parties in a partnership approach. Within the role of Senior Distribution Manager and Head of Logistics Europe role this successful approach was further fine-tuned and brought the loss ratio over a longer period down to almost zero. Benefitting from having 3 hats (procurement/security/transport) on, this approach was also implemented within other divisions by Michael and his team. Tendering and moving the central European warehouse, live visibility, cost to serve, standardisation of processes, centralising reverse logistics, analytics and managing suppliers by data and many other projects supported a growing operation on the way to a central guided and eventually global organisation, which Michael lead as Director Logistics Europe and Global Director Logistics.

By hiring a few years ago, a dedicated Supply Chain Risk and Security Manager, this was boosting the risk management and security/loss prevention activities to a best-in-class operation in EMEA supporting many new releases preventing losses along the supply chain. The focus on risk management over individual security measures was key to this industry recognised success.