About

About William Alvarez

William Alvarez is an industrial engineer with over 20 years of experience in demand, supply, inventory, and logistics operations. His skillsets include excellent analytical capacity and management experience in warehousing, logistics, supply chain management, and finance. His team-oriented approach, along with his problem-solving, negotiation, creativity, and decision-making skills, have been invaluable in the positions he’s held throughout his career.

Alvarez works on a contract basis as an Inventory Control Specialist for JDE Peet’s, the world’s leading pure-play coffee and tea company. He manages lot codes and expiration dates between Peet’s 3PL and internal systems and manually fulfills orders as necessary while prioritizing them based on the company’s business needs. Alvarez also performs ADHOC analysis to determine the root cause of fulfillment failure and communicates his findings to internal and external business partners.

Alvarez also invests in properties and renovates them for sale.

Responsibilities at CVS as Inventory Rx Manager

Prior to his contract work with Peet’s, Alvarez was the Inventory Rx Manager at retail giant CVS Pharmacy, Inc., in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. During his three-year tenure with CVS, Alvarez had numerous responsibilities. They included building a data and reporting infrastructure from the ground up using Tableau/BI and SQL to provide real-time insights into the product, marketing funnels, and business KPIs. He also built Operations, Inventory, and Planning processes using SQL scripts to minimize manual interference steps within the process and optimize the accuracy of the output.

Additionally, Alvarez created daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports using existing and/or self-created tables within the SQL Oracle database. He participated in the implementation and data migration to the “Snowflake Interface” to extend the query and analytical tools available to the CVS Pharmacy division’s Inventory and Operational team.

Alvarez also held weekly training meetings with the Inventory Planning team to help them improve their SQL writing scripts and simplify the most common operational queries. He also led weekly S&OP Forecast Consensus meetings to align marketing, operations, and supply planning final forecasts, along with risk assessments and mitigation activities.

At CVS, he was responsible for developing effective short– and long-term forecast models based on industry trends and the demand trends of product lines. He also ran and executed the inventory replenishment and allocation processes for the CVS network stores of all COVID-19 testing programs, including, but not limited to, distribution and inventory control transactions.

Alvarez served as the primary liaison between vendors and CVS finance and senior regional leaders to produce monthly sales forecasts for planning and submitting weekly purchase orders, as well as recommended and executed business strategies that created mutually beneficial opportunities for the company and its partnerships.

Career Before CVIS

William Alvarez’s career also included two years with Cardinal Health as a Global Demand/Supply Planner, where among his varied responsibilities, he led the S&OP process to improve the alignment of business requirements, demand, and supply on the short- and medium-term based on statistical modeling, sales and product management input, and market analysis. His analysis of statistical forecast quantities was used to adjust and release final net requirements in several unit care health categories, such as needles and syringes, compression and anti-embolism stockings, and thermometers. He also created and maintained forecast models for Cardinal Health’s customers, incorporating business intelligence and forecast information gathered from sales, marketing, finance, and other sources.

From May 2014 to 2018, Alvarez was Hasbro’s Global Planner, Supply Chain & Operations. He managed the supply chain plan and tracked the different stages of the product development from manufacturing (Far East sources) to final customers worldwide (19+ global warehouses) of several high-demand brands such as TROLLs and Disney Princesses. He was responsible for forecasting a $100 million inventory flow and reallocation to reduce logistics costs and delivery fees. 

His first position after moving to the United States from Venezuela was with Ryder System in Miami, Florida, and Plano, Texas, as Customer Logistics Manager. His responsibilities included managing the overall day-to-day planning, organizing, and operations within one of Ryder’s key account DCs (ALCATEL).

Education and Certifications

William Alvarez graduated with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Jose Maria Vargas University, Caracas, Venezuela, in 2000. He also attended Harvard Extension School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, obtaining his Master of Liberal Arts in Finance. He also has his Forecast Business Analytics Certification from the Wharton School of Business and a Master Black Belt Six Sigma certification from Villanova University.

Alvarez is proficient in using WMS Operational systems like SAP, ORACLE, MOVE Optum, TECSYS WMS, Provia, Microsoft Office software (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and Project), SQL, and Python Intermediate.

He is fluent in English and Spanish and also speaks Arabic and Portuguese.

On the Personal Side

Alvarez enjoys playing the guitar, running, and exercising. In his 20s, he worked as a fashion show model and in commercials. In the early 2000s, he also participated in Mr. Venezuela, the country’s annual male pageant.

He is married and has three children.