Interview with RJ De Los Santos

March 2021

My name is RJ De Los Santos. I graduated in 2010 from the College of Business Administration, majoring in Technology & Operations Management and selecting Supply Chain Management as a career track focus. I was Vice President of OMS from 2019-2020, which was known as ATOMS at the time (Association of Technology & Operations Management Students). I also worked on campus as a TOM 301/302 tutor and in the SCOT (Supply Chain Operations Technology) Lab.

After graduating, I began my career path as a logistics analyst for Pepsi Beverages where I was responsible for optimizing daily routing solutions for parts of the west coast. From there, I had a short stint as a reverse logistics supervisor for Oakley/Luxottica, managing the returns and repack operation for domestic and international customers. I then worked for ThyssenKrupp Aerospace, a raw materials subcontractor for Boeing, first as a Lean coordinator, then as an Operations Manager. After that, I moved on to my current company, Kroger, where I worked as Continuous Improvement Leader for their mass production bakery in La Habra. Still at Kroger, I was recently promoted to my current role as Continuous Improvement Manager for west coast manufacturing plants. In my current role, I support the Continuous Improvement Leaders of the plants as a corporate dotted-line, act as mentor for the company’s Lean Six Sigma program and support the company’s overall journey in Continuous Improvement and High Performance Work Systems.

Advice

My advice to current TOM students is to understand your value and be able to grow and apply more! As a TOM student, involvement in OMS/ATOMS helped me understand this concept. Interacting with industry guests and participating in plant tours made me comfortable working in logistics/manufacturing environments and got me thinking about how I could best apply what I learn in the classroom to the real world, where I could really contribute. I owe a lot of my career thus far to my education, but in no way did it end after graduating. Lean Six Sigma certifications and involvement in trade organizations are just some of the ways of growing and applying more. With that, I’ll end with a quote from Taiichi Ohno, one of the gurus of the Toyota Production System/Lean Manufacturing: “Progress cannot be generated when we are satisfied with existing situations”.