RIVIAN AUTOMOTIVE
“ We use the most sustainable products we can and when we went public , 1 % of the company went to the Rivian Forever Fund ,” says Hood .
“ We think about how to operate responsibly within the plant . When we began the conversion of the old Mitsubishi plant to the new Rivian plant , we used some of the old steel to make tables , a mezzanine — and we even repurposed old robots as a door holder for the conference room .
“ We reused things , and maybe went above and beyond . Instead of scrapping it , instead of getting rid of those materials , we thought , ‘ how can we repurpose that and reuse them ?’.”
INDIRECT PROCUREMENT PROVIDES THE OPERATIONAL FOUNDATIONS As a new entrant to the automotive industry in 2009 , Rivian was built with sustainability in mind . And being a new business gave the company a competitive edge to not only grow , but advance the use of new technologies and lean processes .
Hood explains that when he joined the organisation in 2018 , the procurement function was significantly smaller than it is today , but this has allowed the company to take an approach that is driven by technology . “ When I joined , there were 500 , 600 employees . There were about three people within our department ,” Hood says . “ Now , the total company size is more than 20 times that .”
10,000 +
Number of employees
2009
Year founded
“ At the beginning , we had a shell of a manufacturing plant . Now , we ' re fully operational , building three different vehicles with multiple different variations in Normal , Illinois .”
EXECUTIVE BIO
BRAD HOOD
TITLE : DIRECTOR OF INDIRECT PURCHASING
INDUSTRY : MOTOR VEHICLE MANUFACTURING
LOCATION : DETROIT , USA
Brad shifted careers from manufacturing and production planning to procurement after graduating from Western Michigan University with a major in Integrated Supply Chain Management . After spending most of his procurement career in consulting , he joined Rivian at the tail-end of their stealth mode in 2018 to help build their procurement department . Rivian has experienced tremendous growth since then , which includes the indirect procurement team that Brad leads . This has proved both Rivian and Brad the opportunity to grow the procurement organisation in the same manner as Rivian talks about designing the vehicles , from a blank sheet of paper .