Global supply chains are an intricate force, relying on many moving parts to stay moving at all times.

Hygiene and health manufacturing company Essity has been ensuring globally trusted brands can reach the shelves on time, relying on its well-structured supply chain.

Every day, Essity’s products help support the wellbeing of one billion people across 150 countries, working to make the world healthier, more hygienic and safer. To meet this demand, the company uses a well-architected supply chain, with global operations which ensure it demonstrates excellence. 

At the forefront of this function sits Ilham Smaali, the Chief Supply Chain Officer at Essity and member of the Executive Management Team.

“I oversee Essity’s supply chain, which is architected around three dimensions: end to end, decentralised, category led supply chains fully embedded in our four business areas,” explains Ilham.

“Global operations leverage our full scale, such as procurement and fulfillment, and a focused centre of excellence suite covering safety, sustainability and supply chain excellence among other disciplines.”

This ensures the company can maintain agility and can also meet scale in order to bring value and growth around the world.

Overcoming market barriers

Ilham has operated in manufacturing supply chains for more than 20 years, working across manufacturing, planning, logistics and global supply chain leadership.

Throughout her career, she has held senior positions in Procter & Gamble, Estée Lauder and Nike. During this time, she gained a strong understanding of how cross-functional collaboration and agility are vital to organisations of a great scale. 

She joined Essity in 2023, bringing in vast amounts of experience and knowledge about global supply chains in the health and beauty industry. Her core insights going into the role focused on how to turn consistent customer experience into real competitive advantage. 

“The secret ingredient I learned to extensively leverage,” Ilham explains, “is investing in people and partnerships to bring the best out of the whole system. This has deeply shaped the way I lead today.”

Her demanding roles in previous jobs have provided her with the experience in some tough challenges, including coming to understand where different experts sit.

She explains: “When you get challenged by operators who know their processes in and out and possibly better than you will ever do, on the shop floor, in the stores, with our suppliers, our customers and our partners, you learn to deeply understand what it takes to win other times.”

This has enabled her to embrace change and be bold amid uncertainty.

As a result, her leadership focus at Essity prioritises the execution of an ambitious operating model which can be applied to speed across its global footprint, utilising measurable outcomes to focus on productivity and resilience, as well as the renewal of its supply chain to better embrace new trends and meet consumer needs. 

The focus on resilience and excellence has been born from the challenge of maintaining consistency throughout uncertainty – something which companies around the world have become familiar with over the past five years.

Consistency, Ilham recognises, is not about being stagnant in the face of potential growth, but about maintaining a sense of identity and connection with the consumer as they move on the journey together. 

Increasing access

In order to develop a strong and resilient supply chain, Essity has implemented a new operating model, designed to create a more integrated and agile supply chain.

“It brings together strong category-focused execution with global scale advantages, so we can better meet specific customer and market needs while improving performance in service, cost and cash,” Ilham explains.

“The model is built around three key foundations: developing end-to-end supply chain leaders, creating proven and scalable processes and systems and strengthening collaboration across our wider ecosystem of suppliers, customers and partners.”

Alongside this, Essity is aiming to develop integrated category supply chains, making use of its procurement and fulfilment operations. This enables it to gain a stronger platform for today’s supply chains, as well as strengthen its future capabilities.

By putting in the effort to build a resilient tomorrow, Essity is protecting itself against future risk.

A core part of Essity’s ethos is about breaking down barriers to well-being, ensuring that everyone can gain access to, and understand, hygiene and health solutions. Through trusted solutions, innovation and sustainability, the company aims to create value and strengthen competitiveness.

“My role,” Ilham explains, “is to make sure the supply chain is an accelerator of that ambition. No compromise on impeccable quality with a superior customer experience built through efficient and effective ways of working that provide the best value equation. Our products must be available for all, where they need them and when they need them at an affordable price.”

Changing with the trends

As supply chains around the world recognise the risk of purely focusing on efficiency, operations and priorities are changing. Ongoing volatility shows no sign of stopping, which means organisations need to prepare for turbulence.

Now, leading businesses are seeing unlocked value through a stronger push of transparency and resilience. Supply chains which are agile enough to move with changing demands are seeing the benefits. 

With this, the role of technology is changing. It is becoming both a disruptor to supply chains and a vital tool to developing that flexibility needed.

Sustainability is also becoming a more integrated focus, with companies seeing long-term value arise from these strategies.

Ilham says: “Digitalisation is accelerating, with data, automation and AI playing a bigger role in planning, sourcing and fulfillment decisions.”

For Ilham, however, the focus is not on the tools, but the impact.

She adds: “The one key question we must focus on is: where do we dare to transform how we operate and maximise workflow automation, agentic AI, semi-autonomous processes versus where we must retain full control of the final decision.”

Ilham’s focus is on the future of Essity – how it will use its new operating model and where it will scale up its key programmes. As part of this, Essity will be embracing AI throughout its procurement operations, and will be working towards its sustainability agenda.

The company is targeting a 35% emissions reduction across Scope 1, 2 and 3 by 2030. As a further part of its growth, Essity will be accelerating operations in its newly established fulfilment organisation. 

With plans to expand its partnerships and engage in a wider ecosystem, Ilham will not tell us everything about the future of Essity.

She does, however, affirm “we will be bold and deliberate in our choices”.