Ken Fong, A Life in Lessons

Where I Am Now

I am in full time senior management, with thirty years in supply chain behind me. I have worked in strategic sourcing, purchasing and supplier management, production and production planning, warehousing and inventory management, and logistics by land, air and sea. These days I look after group procurement, process systems, and the digital work for a food manufacturing group across ASEAN, where I also lead the business process optimisation work. In the last three years my team delivered USD 2.0 million in savings. My department has also developed a full suite of BI reports and KPI scorecards, covering every function from sourcing to sales and operations planning.

What I Bring

Thirty years across the whole chain, in eight countries. Sourcing, purchasing, production, warehousing and inventory, and logistics by land, air and sea. I learned to negotiate at real tender tables, not in a classroom. I was the subject matter expert on two major software rollouts, SAP and JD Edwards, and a lot of my work is figuring out how to make business processes run smoother and faster. I have built end-to-end SAP learning modules out of that experience. And I can do something not many people can. I get ordinary staff who are not technical to actually use BI and AI tools.

Where I'm Headed

Teaching is where I am headed in the long run. I have already built full teaching modules out of my own cases, and they are ready for a classroom. The plan is simple. I keep leading and mentoring in industry now, take on some part time or adjunct lecturing where it fits, and let teaching grow into my main work as I get closer to retirement.

1990–1994Singapore → USA

From Ngee Ann Polytechnic to Wichita State University

I was a polytechnic boy from Singapore with one dream, which was to live and work overseas. America gave me that chance. I came away with a Bachelor's and a Master's, and I also got my first taste of teaching there, helping students who were struggling with their subjects.

1994–1997USA

The dream came true, my working years in America

Finding a job in 1994 was hard. Calidad gave me my first break, and later I moved to K-TEC. I did process and manufacturing engineering, then quality work for customers like Compaq, Dell and Applied Materials. I spent three years working in America. I learned my fundamentals standing on a factory floor, not in a classroom.

1997–1998Taiwan & Singapore

A year inside a semiconductor fab

Tefen recruited me into engineering consulting. I spent a year inside a semiconductor fab, sorting out their spare parts and consumables inventory, where every hour of downtime costs a fortune. Then I made my way home, through Taiwan.

1998–2002Singapore

Building Asia's express backbone at DHL

I was the project manager for the first and biggest transhipment hub in the Changi Airport freight zone. It was a USD 33 million build, and it sat at the centre of DHL's new Asia Pacific network. The whole thing had one promise to keep. A shipment leaving Tokyo had to reach Sydney in less than 24 hours.

2002–2006Asia

When the deadline is measured in hours

This was critical spare parts across Asia, where the customer needed the part in hours, not days. I designed the hub and spoke distribution network and set up the call centre operations behind it. We ran 25 warehouses in twelve countries, for customers like Cisco, HP and Vodafone.

2006–2007Malaysia

Headhunted to the port, and closing the loop

I was headhunted to one of Malaysia's major ports, and this was where I learned sea freight and seaport operations. I worked on an RM 500 million expansion and sorted out RM 80 million of MRO inventory. This was the piece I had been missing. After this I had done land, air and sea.

2007–2009China

China, where I learned procurement properly

Working in the language and the culture gave me a much deeper feel for cost control, sourcing, and all the small details of buying. I centralised RMB 600 million of annual spend and ran distribution to 3,300 retail outlets around the country. This was where I learned how to keep a procurement organisation clean, and how to find millions in savings through strategic sourcing. I had fifteen people in my team. My Mandarin was never perfect, but they trusted me, and that mattered more.

2010–2013Malaysia

Starting my own business, backed by trust

My former boss from China put his own money in and became my shareholder. We went into mining and commodity trading. It pulled me into a world I had never seen before, with private equity, acquisitions, restructuring and taking a company public. The business eventually closed, but the friendships from it are still with me today.

2013–2015Malaysia

The discipline of regulated food

This was stevia, a regulated food business, so GMP, Halal and audits were part of daily life. I ran procurement and planning, cut packaging inventory by 30% using just in time, and delivered an ERP implementation. Working there made me precise, and the habit stayed with me.

2015–NowSingapore · today

Group supply chain leadership, and passing it on as I go

I look after group procurement and process systems for a manufacturing group across ASEAN. And in my fifties, I found myself teaching staff who are not technical how to use AI. I suppose the learning never stops.

What the journey adds up to

I have done every part of this chain myself.

Procurement→ Production & Manufacturing→ Production Planning→ Logistics→ Distribution

Powered along the way by: ERP Data Analytics · Power BI and now, AI

I did not manage these from a distance. Every one of them is a job I actually held and did.

In recent years my department also built the reporting behind it all. A full suite of BI reports and KPI scorecards covering every function, from sourcing through inventory, production, maintenance and quality control to sales and operations planning. Plus a Learning Hub that explains our whole SAP process from start to finish.

None of the bigger things were ever mine alone. I project managed them, I gave the subject matter content, and I decided what to put in and what to leave out. The teams around me did the rest, and the credit is theirs to share.

Helping struggling students taught me more than my Master's did

Dean Jim Kelley put me in charge of the Supplementary Instruction programme at Wichita State, covering five courses. The idea was simple. We took the students who scored an A the semester before, and got them to teach the ones who were struggling. I thought my job was just to organise it. I ended up learning more than anybody.

When you teach someone, you end up learning it twice.

The right crowd in your team makes all the difference

At K-TEC about 80% of the production floor were Vietnamese immigrants, and management was mostly white. I was a young Asian engineer stuck somewhere in between. Mr Thu Pham and Mdm Thoa Sutphen took me under their wing and taught me how to work in a western culture. Their people were earning close to minimum wage, and I have never seen anyone work harder or care more about quality. It was eye opening for me.

Get the right people into your team and the numbers take care of themselves.

In eight countries, I learned that respect goes further than authority

I have worked in the United States, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. In a country where nobody knows you, your title means very little. But if you show people respect, doors open that your title could never open.

Respect works in every country. A title does not.

When my business ended, my friends did not

We ran the mining and commodity trading business for three years and it closed in 2013. The people from that time are still in my life today, including my old boss who backed me with his own money. The business is gone. The friendships are not.

A business can close. Good friends stay.

The best deals are the ones where both sides win

At PureCircle I cut packaging inventory by 30% using just in time. But JIT is not really a formula, it is a relationship. It only works if your supplier also wins something. I gave them steady volumes and honest forecasts, and they gave me reliability. If you squeeze a supplier until there is nothing left for him, the whole thing falls apart the first time something goes wrong.

Look after your supplier and he will look after you when you really need it.

Enriching others enriches yourself

I have mentored interns on real projects and trained staff across nine sites. Every single one of them made me better at my own job, and a lot more patient than I used to be.

Whatever you give the young comes back to you, usually with interest.

Do not be afraid of a new tool. I learned AI in my fifties

I am not an IT person at all. I still learned AI in my fifties, and then I rolled it out to ordinary staff who are not technical, and watched them get better at their jobs. If I could do it at my age, you can do it too.

AI does not replace someone who is good at their job. It makes them worth more.

Rules do not work until you teach them yourself

I wrote six operational policies covering procurement, inventory, planning, quality and compliance, for nine factories in four countries. Writing them was the easy part. I went to every site myself and ran the training. A policy that sits in a folder as a PDF is not really a policy. It is just a suggestion.

A rule is only as good as the training behind it.

Trust built in one job became a partnership for life

In China I built trust with my team and with my seniors, and that trust outlasted the job itself. Years later my old boss became a shareholder in my own business. That one relationship opened doors I never expected, into private equity, acquisitions, restructuring and public listing.

Do your work well and treat people properly. The relationship will outlive the job.

You do not need to be the smartest one in the room

My job was never to be the one who knew the most. It was to find the people who did know, bring them together, and then get out of their way. Use the expertise around you instead of competing with it.

A good manager is a conductor, not a soloist.

Groom them early, at home and at work

I have three children and they have gone in three different directions. I did not do the work for them, but I made sure all three were positioned before they graduated. I do the same thing with my interns and my staff. I felt that developing young people early is the most valuable thing a senior person can do.

Developing the young is what a leader actually leaves behind.

My children built something together, and that is the real report card

My son started a swim school and his two sisters coach alongside him. They have their own careers during the week and they are at the pool on weekends. I never sat them down and gave them a lecture about family. They just watched, and then they went and built something together.

Whatever you actually live at home is what your children will build.

"Groom people when they are young, and stay with them through the first stage of their career. I did it with my children and I do it with my staff. I think it is the most valuable thing a senior person can pass on."

Dylan

The Entrepreneur

Dylan is twenty two and in his second year at NTU pursuing his degree in Civil Engineering with a minor in International Trading. He swam competitively for years and collected a good number of national medals, his best a silver. He founded O2H Swim School and is its head coach. What impresses me is that he built the whole business on his own. The website, the SEO marketing, and the app that handles schedules, students, parents and payments. He did all of it with AI tools, using Claude Code, Claude Design and Claude Cowork. He is now on his second internship, at Igloo, collecting industry experience before he even graduates.

Mandy

The Professional

Mandy is our eldest. She swam competitively like the other two and brought home a few national medals of her own. She earned her stripes at TotalEnergies, where she completed a two year graduate programme that included a posting in Geneva, and she took on another assignment after that before moving to Orient Oil Express. On weekends she coaches beginners at her brother's swim school, and she has a patience for it that I never had.

Renee

The Carer

Renee is a nurse at KK Women's and Children's Hospital, so she looks after people for a living. She is also the champion of the family in the pool, with more medals than her brother and sister put together and a good handful of them gold. She was Sportswoman of the Year at Nanyang Girls' High School and represented Singapore in Indonesia and the Philippines. She coaches at O2H with her brother, and the two of them are finishing their national NROC coaching certification.

At Home

What they have done is theirs. Dylan built his business, Renee won her medals, Mandy earned her way to Geneva. My part came earlier and was smaller: internships to chase, ventures to try, and guidance that suited who they actually are rather than who I wanted them to be. By the time they walked into their first interview, they were ready.

At Work

I mentor university interns on real projects, not filing. I have trained staff who are not technical to use AI tools, and watched them become more capable. And I have developed people across nine sites in four countries.

If you ask me what I am most proud of, it is not any of their individual achievements. It is that they chose to do something together, without anybody asking them to.

That is why I put my time into building training material from real life, for my staff, for my company, and for the classroom down the road. If you keep your experience to yourself, it retires when you do. If you pass it on, it keeps working.

How I Teach & Coach

Everything I teach comes from real cases. Tenders I ran, shipments that went wrong, teams I had to turn around, and tools I rolled out to staff who were not technical. These are not frameworks out of a textbook. They are decisions I made and then had to live with. The ones that went wrong teach the most, so I share those too.

How This Fits

Adjunct lecturing sits well alongside a full career, and that is the path I am on. What I bring to a classroom is not theory. It is thirty years of real decisions I made and had to live with, turned into practical lessons.

I have not lectured in a university hall yet, but I have taught for years in the room next door. I run boardroom training and town-hall sessions for middle managers and executives on new programmes I have launched, from my Learning Hub to the full suite of Power BI reports. Every month I sit with each factory and walk through their performance on a BI scorecard. Teaching working adults is already part of my job.

Coaching managers

This is for younger managers who are still finding their feet. How to see things properly, how to learn, and how to use the people and the expertise around you.

Leading people older or more expert than you
Managing across cultures
Growing your team while growing yourself

Lecturing supply chain

Practical teaching in plain language, for working adults or university students, from someone who actually ran these functions rather than just read about them.

Strategic Sourcing & Negotiation
Purchasing & Supplier Management
Integrated Logistics & Shipping Flows
International Trading & Incoterms

AI enablement for the non-technical

I am not an IT person, and that is exactly why I can teach this. I help ordinary professionals use AI and BI (like Power BI) so they become more capable instead of more afraid.

Everyday AI tools, explained plainly
Building dashboards and tracking performance so teams can see what is actually happening
Getting past the fear to a first real use

Eight modules, from the first purchase order through to the money side of the supply chain. Built and ready. Real cases, laid out so a working adult can follow them. Seven are finished and the eighth is in final review.

Here is a look inside. It is a small preview; the best way to judge it is to see it live.

Strategic Sourcing & Negotiation

Effective Purchasing Management

Effective Supplier Management

Effective Warehousing & Inventory Management

Transport, Freight & Distribution

AI & Data Analytics for Supply Chain

The Money View of the Supply Chain - Supply Chain Finance

Sales, Operations & Demand Planning

The Platform

A complete learning platform, already built

Every module is a self-contained Learning Hub, with one clear map, lessons that open on a click, and a professional design your learners will trust. It works on any device, with nothing to install.

The Learning Hub for Module 2, Effective Purchasing Management.

The AI Method

AI taught by a practitioner

Module 6 helps non-technical people use everyday AI well. I am not a programmer; I use these tools daily and teach others to do the same. The heart of it is a simple method for getting good answers.

The 6R Prompt MethodBetter prompts, better answers

1RoleTell it who to be. The expert lens changes the answer.

2RequestSay exactly what you want, one task at a time.

3ReferenceGive it the material. Context beats guessing.

4RulesSet the limits: format, length, tone, and what to avoid.

5ResultDescribe the output you expect, such as a table, a draft or a list.

6ReviewCheck and refine. The answer is a draft, not a verdict.

Real-World Depth

Depth from real operations

The material comes from real tenders, shipments and warehouses, so learners leave able to run a real process, not just name a framework.

The Relationship Ladder, from Module 3, Supplier Management.

The Warehouse's Processes, from Module 4, Warehousing.

The Toolkit

Measurement built in

Each module connects to a performance toolkit that moves from the one headline number down to the drivers behind it, so a manager sees not just what happened, but why.

The Supply Chain Performance Toolkit, showing headline KPIs and the drivers beneath them.

If your institution or team could use this, I would be glad to show it to you live. The walkthrough takes about fifteen minutes.

Available to teach, to license, or to run in-house. And, as always, the coffee is on me.

Email Ken for a walkthrough

Ending with the Beginning

This all started with two generous teachers

Two men at Wichita State University shaped what teaching means to me.

The first was a professor whose name I have forgotten, although I have never forgotten his lesson. He walked into class one day and started telling us a story about a disease spreading through a township. Just as the story reached its peak, he stopped and asked us how we would calculate how many more people would get infected. Then, step by step, he built the differential equation in front of us, and every part of that formula suddenly had a reason to be there. Differential equations frighten most students. He turned it into a story I wanted to hear the ending of. I got an A in that class, but the bigger thing was that I learned what teaching could be.

The second was Dr Jim Kelley, the Dean of University College, and my boss. He trusted a young graduate student from Singapore to run the university's Supplementary Instruction programme across five courses, where we brought in the A students from the previous semester to teach the ones who were struggling. He was so proud of what that programme achieved that he coached me, and then pushed me onto a stage in Dallas in 1994 to present the results at a national conference. It was the first time I had ever spoken in public. His generosity was a different kind. He gave me trust, an opportunity, and a push at the exact moment I needed one.

Whatever I am today, as a manager, as a mentor, and as the teacher I am still becoming, these two men had a lot to do with it. I am grateful to them, and that is why they are on this page.

Everything on this page, the coaching, the teaching, the training material, and my belief that good lessons should never be lost, is my way of giving back what they gave me.

Dedicated to Dr Jim Kelley

Dean of University College, Wichita State University. And to the professor whose name I have lost, but whose lesson I never did.

Ken FongA life in lessons

The Journey