Ricardo Castro Alvarado
Curridabat, Costa Rica | -
Email:-| cr.linkedin.com/in/ricardo-castro-064456a
Professional Profile
Operations Professional with 18 years of experience on Multinational Operations. Highly motivated, creative
and flexible leader with extensive skill on Operational Excellence, bringing the know-how for the
optimization of the Supply Chain and deep understanding of financial and commercial areas. A committed
executive with personal excellence and high integrity, capable of managing local and remote
multidisciplinary and multicultural teams, problem solving and crisis management.
Work Experience
Suttle, Costa Rica www.suttlesolutions.com
2017
2010 –
Supply Chain Manager
Manage, plan, coordinate and monitor the end to end Supply Chain Process assuring on time delivery at a
competitive cost. Responsible for the Production Planning, Demand and Forecasting planning,
Logistics Customer Service, Distribution, Inventory Management and Global Procurement
teams on a regulated manufacturing regimen (Free zone and ISO TELCO requirements).
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Create, manage and execute weekly and quarterly plans in collaboration with VP Sales, Manufacturing
and extended leadership teams, allowing the S&OP been implemented and accepted as a tool on the
organization.
Responsibilities include planning supply and demand for over 3,000+ SKUs across ~30 OEMs.
Team consists of 37 employees, including 2 direct managers across 2 sites.
Lead the design and implementation of the 3PL (Third Party Logistics) in Miami, decreasing by 2 weeks
the lead-time to our main distributor.
Lead the NAFTA compliance of more than 3k SKU’s allowing the Tax benefit to our export products to
USA and reducing 50% in customs clearance at destination.
Improve the inventory turnover by reducing the excess supply by over 70% and End of Life material by
over 50% across the 2 sites on the last 2 years.
Responsible for the Tier 1 & 2 supplier’s Service Level Agreements, achieving an average of 25% cost
reductions in our annual budget for the last 3 years working for the company.
Lead successfully the core team of IFS implementation ( ERP) that ensured purchasing and logistics
parameters and establishing KPI’s to enable a secure data analysis.
I leaded the change of the old system of delivery of materials towards the lines of production, (push
system) establishing Kanban's and Supermarkets in the points of use, reducing our rotation of
inventories 1.5 times and improving the flow of materials in the lines of production .
Total PET Packaging, Republica Dominicana & Costa Rica
2007 - 2010
Country Manager
Responsible for the whole business units of Costa Rica and Dominican Republic. In charge for the P&L
(Profits and Losses), the commercial strategy and its execution. Responsible for Human Capital and
development of the Operational Excellence culture in the Production Operation.
• Implemented the S&OP dynamic that allowed the production to gain focus on the profitable lines.
• Lead the NPI processes allowing optimization, automation and standardization allowing a cost reduction with
some customers of 10% in our operation cost.
• Introduce 2 innovative packaging solutions to diversify the business that led to an increase of sales by 12%
on the blow molding products.
▪ Lead a project development with recycled material for customers that allowed us to increase sales on 25%.
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Implemented Pull System, TPM (Total Productive Maintenance), 5S and Visual Management and led Kaizen
events on manufacturing lines, increasing Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) from 50% to 82% and
expanding machine capacity while maintaining optimum utilization
Vitec Manufacturing,Costa Rica www.vitecgroup.com
Supply Chain Manager
2002 – 2007
Responsible for procurement transfer, management of contract negotiations, supplier developments,
warehousing, logistics and distribution. Key leader on transferring our supply chain process from our
European suppliers to the Americas region, developing new suppliers and business regionally to support our
Manufacturing operations in Cartago, Costa Rica.
▪ Lead “Start up and Development” of the supply chain with local and regional suppliers, achieving 35% savings
and relocating in 3 years more than $100 million spent from high to low cost region.
▪ Lead the transition of “European Sourcing into regional suppliers” transferring: plastic injections tools, die
casting tools and more than 700 metallic parts.
▪ Coordinated the search, assess – full appraisal of suppliers including technology capabilities, quality operation
systems, and Open Book Costing acceptance to select and develop suppliers negotiating commercial
agreements framework to enable serial supply to take place.
▪ Developed and installed an “In house Supplier” with a VMI (vendor manage inventory) and JIT (just in time)
scheme's that allowed the factory to remove the shortages of small secondary parts and supplies.
Cooper Electronics Technologies (Cortek)
www.cooperet.com
1998 - 2002
Purchasing & Logistic Supervisor
Responsible to coordinate and guide the business unit to the free zone procedures, assuring the warehousing
and logistics under the automotive ISO regulations. Accountable for the purchasing of raw materials.
▪ Lead the “procurement transition” from Boynton Beach FL. to the Costa Rican facility, absorbing a total
purchasing activity of $80 million yearly.
▪ Cycling counting control process implementation improving the accuracy to 99%.
▪ Leaded the implementation of an ERP on the warehouse area and logistic area.
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Education
PGA Programa de Alta Gerencia, INCAE, Panamá & Costa Rica
MBA Master in Business Administration (Major in Finance), Universidad Interamericana de
Costa Rica, Costa Rica.
Bsc. Business Management, Universidad Latina, Costa Rica.
International Trade Technician, Universidad de Costa Rica, Costa Rica.
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Candidate (ASQ exam pending), Blackberry & Cross, Costa Rica
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CPIM APICS
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Perspectiva Financiera de la Cadena de Suministros, INCAE, Costa Rica
Balance Scorecard, ADEN Business School.
Enfoque & Ejecución, Franklin Covey, Costa Rica
Los 7 hábitos para las personas altamente efectivas, Franklin Covey, Costa Rica.
Costo, Valoración y Medidas de Desempeño de la Cadena de Suministros, LRI, Costa Rica.
Lean Management, Universidad Interamericana, Costa Rica.
Bilingual
Updated Passport & Visa
Professional Development
