When Nick Pennell joined Natara Global as VP Operations and Supply Chain, he inherited a business that had been a quiet backwater inside a larger corporate — under-measured, under-invested, and under-performing. In this episode, Nick breaks down the no-nonsense approach he and his team took to turn things around: establishing consistent KPIs across four global manufacturing sites, identifying root causes through basic Pareto analysis, and shifting high-volume products from make-to-order to ship-from-stock. The results speak for themselves — OTIF improved by up to 12 percentage points at the lowest-performing site, all sites are now tracking in the low-to-mid 90s, and a third of excess inventory has been stripped out.
Nick makes a compelling case that most supply chain transformations don't fail because of a lack of sophisticated tools — they fail because the basics aren't in place. From facing difficult customer conversations head-on to making small but visible investments that rebuild team confidence, this episode is packed with practical, experience-backed insight for anyone leading operations or supply chain in a business that needs to step up fast.
Key takeaways:

Start by measuring consistently — agree on definitions across all sites before anything else
Run a Pareto on your OTIF failures to identify the handful of root causes driving 80% of the issues
Separate your products into runners, repeaters and strangers — ship runners from stock to reduce planning complexity
Speed over perfection: an imperfect metric tracked consistently beats a perfect one that takes months to agree
Make a few visible improvements early — quick wins build team confidence and create momentum
When communicating with customers, suppliers or senior leaders, keep the story simple: here's the problem, here's the root cause, here's the plan
AI and advanced systems have their place, but getting the basics right first will deliver 80% of the benefit

Connect with Nick Pennell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickpennell/
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– Matt and the Inside the Chain podcast team

Connect with Matthew McSharry on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-mcsharry-i4b Visit the insight4business website here: www.insight4business.co.uk

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Inside the Chain is the podcast for operations and supply chain leaders who want real conversations, not textbook theory. Hosted by Matthew McSharry — founder of insight4business and a Lean Six Sigma practitioner with over 20 years of hands-on experience across manufacturing, FMCG, and engineering — each episode brings you honest, practical insight from the people actually doing the work.
From turnarounds and transformations to the everyday challenges of planning, procurement, and performance, Inside the Chain cuts through the complexity and gets back to what really drives results: people, process, and the right systems. Every guest has been in the thick of it — leading operations, fixing what's broken, and building businesses that perform. Whether you're a CEO, MD, head of supply chain, or someone who simply wants to make operations work better, this is the show for you.