Our Supply Chain Heroes program recognizes and celebrates the hard work of LeanDNA customers who optimize inventory, reduce shortages, and empower their companies to operate more efficiently. Every hero has a story, and we’re here to tell them.
Meet supply chain hero Christopher Barker, Global Director of Material, Planning & Logistics (MP&L) at Modine, a leader in thermal management solutions. Christopher is spearheading transformational supply chain improvements that are driving tangible results across visibility, efficiency, and performance.
Confronting Reporting Chaos with Focused Leadership
Before implementing LeanDNA, Christopher Barker and his team were battling a challenge many supply chain leaders know all too well: fragmented data and time-consuming manual processes. With critical PFEP (Plan for Every Part) reporting scattered across multiple spreadsheets, it was difficult for his team to identify priorities, forecast inventory levels, or make confident, data-driven decisions.
Although they leveraged the ERP system for exports and tracking, the lack of centralized analytics often left the team reacting to problems instead of proactively solving them.
“We were challenged with time and manual reporting efforts. We also lost control of what was really important and where we put our focus.” - Christopher Barker, Global Director of Material, Planning & Logistics (MP&L)
Under Christopher’s direction, the team worked to monitor shortages, segment SKUs, and establish inventory policies—but without a unified system, visibility remained inconsistent across sites. This made it difficult to respond quickly and strategically to disruptions.
Centralized Visibility Drives Real Results
With the help of LeanDNA, Christopher and his teams gained the real-time visibility and structure they needed to shift from reactive to proactive planning. The improvements were fast and measurable.
Clear to Build (CTB) skyrocketed from 35–40% to 90–95%, marking a major improvement in production readiness. The team also achieved a 4x reduction in shortages within a four-week window, resulting in fewer disruptions to production. In some focus plants, inventory levels dropped by 50%, increasing turns and freeing up working capital. Additionally, the team removed longstanding constraints between financial forecasts and sales targets—aligning operations more closely with business performance.
Standard work practices also evolved. Christopher noted that visibility into shortages, inventory, and CTB progress gave buyers, planners, and MP&L leaders a shared language and framework. This directly improved on-time delivery and factory efficiency.
“Harmonized data, analytics, and visibility creates a single focus for understanding how quickly you can resolve day-to-day supply chain problems.” - Christopher Barker
Scaling Success Across Sites
With strong results in hand, Christopher is focused on scaling the transformation across all Modine plants. The next 12 months will be dedicated to maintaining high CTB performance, increasing inventory turns, and ensuring LeanDNA adoption becomes part of each site’s daily rhythm.
To support this, Modine is expanding its network of LeanDNA subject matter experts (SMEs) and holding regular training sessions. Operating rhythms are being introduced to help teams track progress, hold each other accountable, and continuously improve.
A Word of Advice: Standardize Work and Embrace Technology
Reflecting on his experience, Christopher emphasizes one key message for other supply chain professionals: don’t wait to invest in tools that enable better decision-making.
“I strongly suggest businesses move towards enhancing standard work with integrating technology to help them achieve their goals. AI and analytics are critical to move a business forward.” - Christopher Barker
Christopher’s focus on visibility, standard work, and continuous improvement has made a lasting impact. His leadership is a great example of the innovation and dedication we celebrate in our Supply Chain Heroes.
If you’d like to nominate someone for our Supply Chain Hero program or view more heroes stories, click here.
If Christopher’s story resonated with you and you’d like to learn more about LeanDNA, click here to schedule a demo.
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