Liz Door
Chief Supply Chain Officer
Ford Motor Co., Dearborn
Dearborn
Employees: 171,000
Revenue: $185B
While studying packaging engineering at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Liz Door, chief supply chain officer at Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, couldn’t have imagined the path her career would take.
Door, who once played on the volleyball, basketball, and softball teams at Oxford High School, now patrols Ford headquarters with concerns about government affairs and international trade.
“Fifteen or 20 years ago, purchasing was about cost and technology,” Door says. “Now it’s about all kinds of different things. There are geopolitical circumstances and international trade.
“You need to have legal knowledge, business acumen, (and know about) government affairs, communications, and HR. There are all of these skills that supply chain management requires, and I think that’s what has kept it interesting to me.”
Door has been engaged throughout her career, which started with packaging internships at Kraft General Foods in New York and Post Cereal in Battle Creek.
“I picked packaging engineering because my understanding at the time was that MSU had the best package engineering school in the country, and I was confident that I’d get a job in that major,” Door says of her choice of college major. “Soon after the internships, I decided packaging probably wasn’t my calling.”
Her first job out of college in 1995 was as a resident quality engineer for Prince Corp. at a Chrysler assembly plant in St. Louis. Prince Corp. was an electronics supplier that eventually became part of Johnson Controls.
After a year at that job, Door decided to return to Michigan. She leaned on her grandfather, who played golf with someone from GM who arranged an interview for her. The interview went well and led to an opportunity as a contract package engineer for General Motors Service Parts in Flint, working on boxes and graphics for AC Delco.
“I got to do more than work with boxes,” she explains. “I met a lot of people on the sales and marketing side.”
Ultimately, she was offered a full-time position in the purchasing department at GM Truck in Pontiac. Four years later, when GM’s truck and car businesses merged, she moved to Warren, where she spent the rest of her 15-year GM career in a variety of supply chain roles.
“I enjoyed going to the plants and seeing how things go together, the engineering aspect of it,” she says. “I honestly never thought I’d leave GM, but I got a call about an opportunity at Whirlpool to be on a business team and be head of North American procurement. I got to be a bigger fish in a small pond.”
After leading Whirlpool Corp.’s North American procurement, she was named the appliance company’s executive vice president of global strategic sourcing and was made a member of the company’s executive committee.
In 12 years at Whirlpool in Benton Harbor, on the state’s west side, she found that although they have their differences, the automotive and appliance businesses are quite similar. Like the auto industry, the appliance industry was under pressure from Asian competitors and had small profit margins. Sales are tied to innovation, design, price, and brand experiences.
“One of the things I’ve learned is that I like working at product companies, especially products that make the tasks you really don’t like doing easier. To work on all the products that delight people in the kitchen was pretty cool, although my experience at GM was the foundation for everything.”
The COVID-19 pandemic brought into focus just how important the kitchen, and its equipment, can be to families.
“When the pandemic hit, the kitchen became the center of our home,” Door says.
Two years ago, a couple of years removed from the pandemic, Door got a call from Ford about becoming its chief supply chain officer. Her objectives at Ford are to improve quality, reduce costs, and leverage product connectivity and digitalization, while improving relations across the company’s supply chain.
Although purchasing and supply chain management have evolved over the years, recent times are presenting even more challenges for people in Door’s business.
“What are we not facing?” Door asks with a chuckle. “If I start mapping and plotting out a calendar or an order of time and events, there’s always some black swan event.”
A black swan event is defined as a rare, unpredictable, and impactful event that defies expectations and significantly alters the course of events.
“There are these circumstances that arise that require problem-solving,” Door says. “I continue to be in roles that require problem-solving, so I must like it.”
Unlike some other pioneering women in the auto industry, Door says she didn’t notice too many hurdles along the way that were specifically due to her gender.
“I didn’t pay attention to that until others made me aware,” she says. “There were some awkward moments on the assembly plant floor as a 21-year-old, but eventually you become part of the ecosystem.”
With two college-age children and a retired husband at home, Door doesn’t see retirement in the near future. Rather, she expects to ramp up her involvement in the United Way, which she became affiliated with 10 years ago on the west side of the state. She’s also eager to continue her work under the Blue Oval.
“To be part of the transformation and modernization of Ford is pretty exciting,” she says.
