On Monday this Chief Procurement Officer news hit the AP wire.

DuPont Names Shelley Stewart as Vice President of Sourcing & Logistics and Chief Procurement Officer

(AP) June 4 – Wilmington, DE – DuPont has named Shelley Stewart, Jr. as Vice President of Sourcing & Logistics and Chief Procurement Officer, effective July 9.

Stewart, 59, has held a range of procurement and supply chain leadership positions with progressive responsibilities during his career. He is senior vice president of operational excellence and Chief Procurement Officer at Tyco. Prior to Tyco, Stewart was senior vice president of supply chain at Invensys and vice president of supply chain with Raytheon following 18 years with United Technologies where he held a range of senior level operations and supply chain roles.

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We’d like to extend our congratulations to Shelley, an industry leading CPO who is also an industry leading business executive, a progressive leader and a “friend of the site.” The press release above notes Shelley’s experience at a high level but fails to fully capture the impact that he has had during the turnaround and subsequent divestiture at Tyco. As such, I wanted to present a fuller picture of what this Best-in-Class CPO has been focused on at Tyco where he oversaw $13 billion in procurement spend and led cross-divisional teams in an effort to reduce cost and increase efficiency throughout Tyco (and unlocked more than $1 billion in savings in his first three years). We should note that Shelley was not just Tyco’s CPO, but, he was also senior vice president of operational excellence which means that he had responsibility for $500 million in IT costs as well as corporate oversight of real estate, trade compliance, and six sigma.

Beyond his role at Tyco, Shelley has been heavily involved in ISM as a board member and in 2010 became that rare CPO, when he was appointed to the board of directors of Cleco Corp (Ticker CNL).

I also went back and reviewed my notes from our last conversation which focused on a wide range of topics including managing supply in tough times, particularly when capacity is constrained and accuracy becomes hugely important, managing talent and his progressive talent rotational program that took top recruits through a two-year program that placed participants to different lines of business and different geographies, and managing careers in procurement. He hit upon a ton of progressive ideas in what was a discussion of no more than 30 minutes.

Perhaps the thing I appreciate most about Shelley is that he has been a tireless advocate for the procurement profession and a strong believer that the broad-based experience and skills that a procurement and supply chain professional can gain prepares you well to add value at the executive level. In this case, Shelley serves as his own best example or role model.

Tyco’s loss is DuPont’s gain – Congrats Shelley!

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