The start of 2008 has seen a number of announcements from companies around new supply chain and logistics executive appointments. Several are reflective of three corporate trends: first, many companies are creating for the first time a new executive position with responsibility for the entire supply chain; second, many former supply chain leaders are winning COO (chief operating officer), President and even CEO titles; and third, a small, but growing, number of companies are giving a single exec responsibility for both supply chain and IT.

On the last trend, Advance Auto Parts recently announced Kevin Freeland has been named Executive Vice President, Supply Chain and Information Technology. Freeland will be a member of Advance's Executive Committee and will report to Darren Jackson, President and CEO.

Freeland had previously been with Best Buy, serving as Senior Vice President of Inventory and then President of the Musicland Division. Before that, he spent eight years at Payless Shoe Source in a variety of merchandising positions, including Vice President of Merchandise Distribution.

Freeland replaces Roy Martin. Martin resigned as Senior Vice President, Supply Chain, effective February 8, 2008.

Spansion Inc., the world's largest pure-play provider of Flash memory solutions, recently made a similar move with the appointment of Ajit Manocha as executive vice president of worldwide operations. Manocha will be responsible for all aspects of Spansion's global manufacturing operations, IT and supply chain management, including product cost, yields, quality, reliability, on-time delivery, manufacturing cycle times and customer service.

Manocha has held several senior executive and management positions at NXP, Philips Semiconductors, AT&T Microelectronics and AT&T Bell Laboratories. Most recently, he was executive vice president and chief manufacturing officer at NXP (formerly Philips Semiconductors), where he was responsible for heading up worldwide IC manufacturing, supply chain management and purchasing for the semiconductor division.

Cintas, the Cincinnati-based leader in uniform manufacturing and distribution, promoted a former supply chain executive to a top corporate management spot.

J. Phillip Holloman has been named president and COO of the publicly held, Cincinnati-based company. In his 12 years at Cintas, Holloman has served in various capacities, primarily in the supply chain. His most recent post was senior vice president of global supply chain management.

Holloman first joined the company in 1996, as vice president of engineering and construction. Four years later, he rose to oversee distribution and product planning, where he led the effort to build 37 new Cintas rental processing facilities and standardized the utilization of automated processing equipment systems. He also implemented a process that reduced the time it took to achieve target operating efficiency by 75 percent.

"Phillip's strong leadership has been a driving force behind our company's success," said Cintas CEO Scott Farmer. "His outstanding track record in implementing our corporate Six Sigma initiative, opening new distribution centers and developing our Global Supply Chain group will be of tremendous value as president and chief operating officer of Cintas."

Struggling electronics retailer Circuit City also named a new COO who will have responsibility for supply chain management, among other duties. John T. Harlow was named chief operating officer in an effort to spur a turnaround at the consumer-electronics retailer. He will oversee Circuit City's retail stores, real estate, information technology and supply chain. Harlow was most recently a retail director with Deloitte Consulting, where he worked with Circuit City.  Before joining Deloitte, Harlow was senior vice president, operations for the A&P U.S. grocery store division.

Meanwhile, ProBuild Holdings Inc., the nation’s largest professional building materials supplier, today announced the appointment of Paul Dodge to the newly created position of senior vice president of supply chain. Dodge joins ProBuild from Centex Homes, one of the nation’s largest home builders, where he served for nine years, most recently as senior vice president of purchasing and supply management.