Article
Marion: “Our top strength is our flexibility”
At the heart of our business is our promise to our customers. Our focus is to help the Nokian Tyres dealers, our customers, to improve their ability to serve their customer, the driver. We aim to deliver smart solutions to help increase the earning potential and ongoing flexibility of our customers’ business.Supply Planning Manager for North America, Marion is one of the Nokian Tyres people working hard to support, collaborate, and build the tools and services that make the relationship with our customers easy, profitable and future proof in one of key markets. Marion’s team’s responsibility is to make sure our customers get the right products at the right place and at the right time, and to efficiently meet our customers’ demand to support our growth in North America.
“Each component of our supply chain plays a role in our efficiency, and we are lucky to have competent and hard-working people in our team”, says Marion.
Juggling a supply chain requires analyzing several components, such as demand and production capacity, to identify gaps and proactively find solutions.
“In my opinion, our top strength is our flexibility. We have the people and the type of business that makes it possible to adjust and minimize any disruptions in our operations.”
Marion has been working for Nokian Tyres for almost four years, starting as a customer service specialist for the East Canada region. Eventually her Nokian Tyres journey led her as the Supply Planning Manager for our North America business unit.
Marion’s typical workday is composed of reporting, meetings - and a lot of data analysis. She interacts daily with our customer service department, transportation, warehousing, and with our global team who is there to support whenever needed.
“We are lucky to be a global company and it is always a pleasure for me to interact with people of different nationalities.”
And that is exactly what Marion finds the most pleasant about her job: the variety of people she gets to collaborate with.
“From R&D, marketing, sales, demand and supply planning, transportation to customer service, I particularly enjoy learning from their side of the business.”
Like in any other business, the Nokian Tyres team sometimes faces challenges that cannot be always fully prepared for. These unexpected elements require Marion and her team to adapt and sometimes change their plans completely. It is in these demanding unforeseen situations that their expertise and the cooperation between the local and global units comes to play:
“We have an open and swift communication between departments, which makes us able to react to any challenges in a timely manner.”
This year and in the years after that, product launches, ramping up the plant, growing demand and a new factory warehouse will keep the Nokian Tyres North America team busy. Marion sees every occasion as a chance for professional growth and she wishes to keep learning as much as possible in order to improve the Nokian Tyres supply planning efficiency.
“My goal is to handle the challenges as well as possible to ensure that our customers keep trusting us.”
For Marion, working for Nokian Tyres in North America gives a sense of family.
“We are a global company, but we managed to keep a small company mindset, where everybody knows each other and where you can easily reach out to top management if needed. That gives me a sense of belonging which is, in my opinion, difficult to reach in most large companies.”
Amidst her demanding tasks and busy workdays, Marion appreciates the flexible work schedule that Nokian Tyres offers, and appreciates the company for putting the emphasize on work-life balance. “It is crucial to me in the world we live in.”
