Interview with Sanchay Roy, General Manager Manufacturing at Shell Lubricants
“In every sector, the staff is the foundation for success,” says Sanchay Roy, General Manager Manufacturing, Quality and Engineering at Shell Lubricants. He emphasizes that effective leadership means enabling colleagues to develop innovative, targeted strategies that align with current needs and circumstances. This is especially important in a multinational and publicly traded company like Shell, which is comparable in size to a small country and requires capable governance.
Sanchay was the keynote speaker at the most recent Vision Dinner of 2024, organized within the Smart Industry Network Netherlands. At the historic location of Slot Loevestein, twenty prominent leaders from leading companies in the smart industry and the manufacturing industry came together for an inspiring Vision Dinner. For this occasion, we spoke with Sanchay about how he developed his vision of operational excellence, how he stimulates a culture of change, and what goals he wants to achieve during his career at Shell.
Operational Excellence as a Common Theme in Sanchay’S Career
Sanchay has been working at Shell for nine years and two years within the Lubricants business. In his current role, he oversees manufacturing excellence, engineering, quality, and the digital supply chain. Shell has maintained the top position as a global supplier of lubricants for 17 consecutive years. The Shell Lubricants business has a global supply chain and a production location network consisting of 31 blending plants, 4 base oil plants, 7 grease plants and 6 storage centers for base oils. Striving for excellence is deeply rooted in Sanchay’s daily work, which is reflected in Shell Lubricants’ collaborations with prestigious racing events such as Formula 1, a fact that he proudly displays on his LinkedIn profile.
Sanchay, born and raised in India, began his career in his home country at General Electric. He quickly expanded his expertise to Europe, where he continued his career at GE, mainly focused on the automotive and white goods industries. After working in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom, he settled in the Netherlands and made the switch to the Dutch company Philips in 2007. His time at Philips led to the revitalization and optimization of an important segment within the supply chain. What Sanchay takes away from his time at Philips is the strategic knowledge and experience to translate a company vision into profitable results. In the pursuit of operational excellence, it is crucial to understand both the language of the boardroom and that of the shop floor.
Operationalizing Shell’S Strategy in Daily Practice
Shell has been active in the lubricants industry for more than a century, with a strong position in sectors such as the automotive industry, industrial applications and as a major OEM supplier for iconic brands. Over the years, Shell Lubricants has remained an important supplier for companies in the automotive sector, driven by quality and technological advancement. However, with the global transition to electric vehicles, the demand for lubricants is also changing. Sanchay emphasizes that in such transition periods it is essential to pay attention to the needs of customers and employees at the same time. “I believe that by working together with our customers, we can reinvent ourselves to remain future-proof.” Roy strongly believes in the importance of stimulating a culture of change, because the world is constantly changing. Only by staying up-to-date with the needs of customers and by allowing yourself to enter new sectors can you remain relevant.
But above all, or perhaps even more so, the responsibility for promoting this culture of change lies with the leaders when it comes to employees. A strategy is only successful if the people in the factories support it. For Sanchay, the focus is on this type of stakeholder management. The key is to give factory managers worldwide the freedom to place local emphasis on their way of working, while at the same time ensuring consistency between the factories. “Our responsibility is to empower the factory managers in their work. I have seen how they have developed their problem-solving skills when they were given the confidence to run the local factory in their own way. And problem-solving ability at all levels in the organization makes the difference between a successful and a less successful company.”
Shell is like a Small Country
Sanchay compares Shell to a country, where he sees the matrix organization functioning as a government, with different units that resemble ministries with a complex range of stakeholders and global events. As a leader in operational excellence, he encounters similar challenges in the field of supply chain and operations. For example, aligning activities within the operational units and navigating the impact of global events such as conflicts and pandemics. That is why Sanchay believes that the resilience of the supply chain should be a top priority.
Sanchay also makes the comparison with a country in the way of working within the organization, due to the presence of diverse cultures worldwide. He acknowledges that changing a culture is never easy, perhaps even impossible. The working method and vision of a unit or factory have often grown historically. That is why it takes time before the guidelines of top management are understood at all levels of the organization. For Sanchay, this means that he invests time and effort in gaining support on the shop floor: “I try to ensure that colleagues ‘s in the factories do not see the leadership vision as a fad, but believe in it themselves.’ The integration of technological solutions is one of the next big steps Sanchay is working on. Technology, processes and culture are interconnected and require a new way of working, ‘and will only succeed when our colleagues’ s worldwide believe in the importance of adaptation and change.”
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