Chris Oleksy in 1998 joined Medtronic Inc.'s Cardiac Surgical Products unit in Grand Rapids, Mich., from Dow Corning Corp., where he had worked for 14 years. At the Midland, Mich.-based Dow Corning, he served as manager of corporate supply chain management and global inventory manager.
He currently oversees the Medtronic division's supply chain strategic sourcing and OEM business development. Oleksy purchases about $25 million a year of plastics products, mostly disposables, used in such critical applications as heart bypass valves. He also has been instrumental in Medtronic's decision to outsource more of its production, including selling its Grand Rapids injection molding facility in early 2001 to Tech Group Inc. The Minneapolis-based medical technology company has annual sales exceeding $6.5 billion.
In 1989 Oleksy published work on artificial intelligent planning and scheduling systems along with Sanjiv Sidhu, who later formed software developer i2 Technologies. And seven years later, he was a core member of the supply chain council that built the industrywide ANSI standards model called SCOR, for Supply Chain Operations Reference. Oleksy graduated in 1984 from Indiana University's Kelly School of Business with dual bachelor degrees in quantitative business analysis and production operations management.
