Suraj Rao

About Suraj Rao

I lead the Advanced Analytics Office at Western Digital Corporation. I partner with…

Experience

1. Global Head, Advanced Analytics Office

   WD

   Jan 2018 — Present

   I led the formation of Digital Analytics Office in April 2018 with the enterprise mission of accelerating business value capture through analytics across Western Digital. In the short period since its formation, the bootstrapped Office, now called Advanced Analytics Office, has grown, and delivered over $200 Million in Capital Expenditure and Cost reduction committed savings with more value savings in the pipeline. The Office now partners with over dozen global factories, 3 engineering developments site, Global Logistics, Supply Chain, Business Units, and Sales organizations to deliver business focused advanced analytics solutions. We deliver analytic solutions through a structured operating model that allows us to conduct Rapid Learning Cycles in targeted domains and rapidly scale them for production delivery. We use a platform approach to solutions to enable high reuse and rapid adoption. The operating model leverages Agile principles to enable fast solution delivery. Recently the Office brought into its fold the Big Data Platform solution team. This exciting new addition will further enable tighter integration of our Advance Analytics solutions with On-premise and Multi-Cloud data platform solutions. Achievements:* Enable 20% Test time reduction and Test capital equipment cost avoidance through Machine Learning (ML) platform and Adaptive test models * Achieve 10% Global logistics savings through Logistics optimization for On-time-Delivery and warehouse location planning solutions * Deliver 10s of Million in Cost savings through Digital Twin solutions spanning factory layout optimization, Robot Routing, Capacity planning, Auto-scheduling, and WIP dispatching * Deliver significant reduction in warranty reserve allocation and enhance customer experience by developing and delivering Quality ML platform for product manufacture and customer data *Received multiple Global Operations awards for scaling above solution into production

Education

• Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

  B.Sc/MS, Mathematics

• Carnegie Mellon University

  Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Statistics

• The Wharton School

  MBA, General Management

Skills

• Start-Ups
• Business Process Mapping
• Customer Retention, Attrition, and Customer Life Time Value
• Predictive Modeling
• Performance Metrics Definition and Tracking
• Management Consulting
• Global Project Execution
• Analytics
• Financial Analysis for Benchmarking
• Supply Chain Analytics
• Strategy
• Go-to-Market Strategy
• Asic
• Statistical Modeling
• Value Capture
• Competitive Analysis
• Market and Competitive Analysis
• Semiconductors
• Semiconductor Manufacturing and Yield Improvement
• Strategy and Operations
• Leadership
• Market Segmentation, Factor and Cluster Analysis
• Idea Prototyping Using Available Tools: R, Jmp/Sas, Excel, Etc
• Business Analytics
• Product Management
• Driving Cross Culture International Engagements
• Supply Chain Management
• Cross-Functional Team Leadership
• Product Marketing
• Value Chain Analysis