From IT to the Smart Lean Team: Gregory's Kuehne + Nagel story

With a background in IT, Gregory had never really envisioned a career in logistics. That is, until he got the chance to drastically cut his commuting time by accepting an interesting opportunity in Kuehne + Nagel Antwerp. 19 years later you can still find him in Kuehne + Nagel where - under the motto 'work smarter, not harder' - he helps teams across our forwarding departments to adapt a more efficient way of working . This is his development story.

Starting part-time as an assistant to the System & Process Manager, and part-time in Customer Solutions, Gregory was a bit of a jack-of-all-trades in the early days of his Kuehne + Nagel career. “I did some IT support and Sales support… a bit of everything. Eventually it evolved more towards Customer Solutions which at time wasn't yet an established separate role. So I helped to develop that role and completed many Customer Solution projects in BeNeLux until I eventually took on a regional role as Customer Solutions EDI Project Manager”, Gregory explains.

After two years in his regional role, Gregory wanted to shift his focus to a local level again. While dedicated Continuous Improvement teams were already well-established in our Contract Logistics environments (i.e. our KNPS teams), Kuehne + Nagel BeLux' Seafreight, Airfreight, and Overland forwarding departments had no such counterpart. Hence Gregory returned to Belgium aiming to establish such a team. Until today, he and our colleague Christina from Luxembourg promote improvement projects across BeLux. “With Christina’s background in 4PL and continuous improvement, and my experience with systems and logistics, we make a good duo as the so-called Smart Lean team”, he says.

“With Christina’s background in 4PL and continuous improvement, and my experience with systems and logistics, we make a good duo as the so-called Smart Lean team.”

Since the team kind of operates ‘under the radar’, few people have an idea of the large variety of projects they tackle. Gregory explains: “our projects range from big restructuring projects that completely reform the ways of working, to simply recording a macro in Excel to automate repetitive actions.” And when a project involves software integration, Gregory explains, they work together with his ‘old’ EDI team. “The internal information broker programs the systems according to our needs and instructions, and we do the testing and the implementation”, he clarifies. 

Throughout the years I’ve had the chance to grow and learn new things. I also learned more about myself: what do I like to do, what don’t I like?

Besides his love for helping others in the company work more efficiently, Gregory also greatly appreciates Kuehne + Nagel as an employer. “All I can say is that the clichés are true”, he adds laughingly. “Kuehne + Nagel is a company with a lot of opportunities. Throughout the years I’ve had the chance to grow and learn new things. I also learned more about myself: what do I like to do, what don’t I like? I even received several offers to move abroad but unfortunately it was never the right time.” Next time, perhaps?

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