We catch up with Dhaval Desai, Principal Group Engineering Manager at Microsoft, to witness a massive and sustainable transformation at the tech giant…
In the past four years, Microsoft has gained more than 80,000 productivity hours and avoided hundreds of millions in costs. Did you miss that? That’s probably because these massive improvements took place behind the scenes as the technology giant moved to turn supply chain management into a major force driving efficiencies, enabling growth, and bringing the company closer to its sustainability goals.
Expect changes and outcomes to continue as Dhaval Desai continues to apply the learnings from the Devices Supply Chain transformation – think Xbox, Surface, VR and PC accessories – with cross-industry experiences to the fast-growing Cloud division where demand for Azure is surging.
As the Principal Group Software Engineering Manager, Desai is part of the Supply Chain Engineering organisation, the global team of architects, managers, and engineers in the US, Europe, and India tasked with developing a platform and capabilities to power supply chains across Microsoft. It’s an exciting time. Desai’s staff has already quadrupled since he joined Microsoft in 2021, and it’s still growing. Within the company, he’s on the cutting edge of technology innovation testing generative AI solutions. “We are actively learning how to improve it and move forward,” he tells us.
Supply chain may be behind the scenes, but it’s forward-looking and massive. Just how big? Consider this: supply chains at Microsoft make contributions to two key business segments: Personal Computing and Intelligent Cloud. These business segments account for two-thirds of the $211.9 billion in revenue Microsoft posted in fiscal 2023. In other words, the size and complexity of the Microsoft supply chain easily rival the size and complexity of many Fortune 500 companies. Dhaval and his team have been on an incredible journey!
