A Life Shaped by Problem-Solving and Innovation

Kirkegaard’s influence in the industry can be seen through numerous success stories in industry, strategy management consulting, early employee of i2 Technologies, venture startups and DCRA inc. founded my Kirkegaard in 2002.   An early client of DCRA is was turnaround work with a division of  Siemens in the early 2000s. DCRA and Kirkegaard reduced excess working capital from over $800 million to under $50 million while simultaneously doubling sales and profits. “This was accomplished not by fancy financial maneuvers or radical restructuring, but through the disciplined application of S&OP demand and supply principles,” he recalls. “The real breakthrough was integrating simple supply chain concepts that allowed us to synchronize supply and demand at the operational level on a weekly basis. That was revolutionary at the time.” They also pioneered S&OP based time based pricing at Siemens  a concept DCRA Inc. uses with all its clients.

Such achievements highlight Kirkegaard’s belief that supply chains should not merely be seen as logistics functions or cost centers. “Supply chains are critical to top down competitive advantage and bottom up job satisfaction. If we align supply with demand efficiently, we generate free cash flow, reduce waste, and ultimately, create value for shareholders. For me, it’s always been about understanding the bigger picture—how to align operations, finance, and technology to work towards one unified goal.”

This approach has earned Kirkegaard recognition for his ability to translate complex problems into simple, executable strategies. A six time winner of Demand and Supply Chain Executive’s Pro’s to  Know Mr Kirkegaard’s work spans nearly all industries from hi-tech, telecom’s, process indsutries, and inparticual the discrete automotive industry in which under the DCRA umbrella manages two manufacturing operations. In one notable project, he helped redesign the supply chain strategy for a top snack food company, which became the second-best grocery food launch in history. “It’s all about matching the lead time of demand with the lead time of supply,” he explains. “By simplifying the way people understand and work within these systems, we removed the friction between supply and demand that often leads to stockouts or overproduction.”

The Industry’s Evolution: A Critical Moment

Despite these successes, Kirkegaard remains critical of the supply chain industry’s direction in recent years. “I see a lot of noise from big tech companies in the supply chain space. Over the past two decades, the focus has shifted away from value creation towards functionalizing supply chain processes in a failed belief standards create value ?  This commoditization of the supply chain has failed and now many of these functional non connected supply chain technologies are the problem as they make demand and supply balancing more difficult if not impossible across proprietary platform and systems” he laments.

For Kirkegaard, the most significant trend in recent years has been the industry’s slow response to the fundamental need for on-demand, time-based synchronization of supply and demand. “I’ve been advocating for this for decades,” he says. “Back in 2002, we were already working on on demand synchronization of demand and supply. Yet, here we are, and the industry still largely focuses on monthly S&OP cycles. The future of supply chain management is about enabling on demand decentralied workflows across manufacturing ecosystems.  In fact in 2023 Mr. Kirkegaard was awarded USPTO patents for decentralized S&OP collaboration technologies that allow for any system from spreadsheets to the most proprietary APS or ERP to collaborate.  A ground breaking application to effortlessly orchestrate and synchronize S&OP across independent operations and companies.

This critique is not just philosophical; it stems from Kirkegaard’s deep-seated concern for the future of American manufacturing and its role in national security. “Supply chains are more than just an economic issue. They’re a matter of national defense, quality of life, and job creation,” he says. “We can outsource successfully to trusted trading partners where we have complimentary skills.  However we cannot let wholesale manfuacturing leave to China and other predatory nation states that are not outsourcing but fundamentally manipulating global economics of entire industries under the “guise” of outsourcing. We cannot out centrally manipulate nation state command and control economies with just centralized cloud computing platforms  Rather we can use innovation such as DCRA’s patented M8kit.net to unleash what the American Enterprise Institute calls decentralized., spontaneous free market collaboration to drive productivity gains impossible to achieve with authoritarian top down planned government economies such as the CCP and China.