Honorary mention for Kavita Gahlawat at WIDA 2020

Kavita Gahlawat may have been pipped at the 'finalist' post but her remarkable journey over the past twelve years at EOS earned her an honorary mention at the Australian Defence Magazine (ADM) Women in Defence Awards 2020 held virtually on 23 October 2020.

Twelve years ago, emigrating by herself with her small children speaking very little English, Kavita was in search of work. EOS recognised her passion and gave her the chance she needed. Kavita started as a Materials Handler and progressed through the ranks to her current position today at EOS Defence Systems; General Manager Global Supply Chain.

EOS’ success is critically dependent on its supply chain and supply chain partnerships.

Kavita manages EOS Defence Systems’ entire global supply chain operations with a key focus on top and bottom-line profitability, ensuring optimal utilisation of supplier capability and capacity globally.

She was nominated for Technical Trade award category for the work she did in 2019, particularly the:

  • $16M reduction in bill of materials (BOM) costs across 500+ remote weapon systems
  • Sourcing and timely delivery of high quality materials (400,000 parts) exceeding $80M value
  • 0.004% variance at stock take of $30M stock
  • Growth of Australian sourced parts from $7M per year in 2015 to $60M per year in 2019

Speaking of Kavita's nomination Warwick Holloway SVP Production and Global Supply Chain said,  “Kavita is loyal determined and absolutely dependable. She has an incredible perseverance and capacity to move mountains one relentless bite at a time. She is disciplined, accurate and her knowledge is very detailed, demonstrated in part by her ability to recognise thousands of individual part numbers from memory. She has significant ERP expertise and provides key validation materials requirement for engineering and planning, often demonstrating depth of understanding required to identify and correct ERP tools avoiding purchase suggestion error. Importantly Kavita is also an excellent negotiator and has successfully worked with entire supply chain to balance healthy robust supply with control of customer costs. This has saved EOS’ customers many millions of dollars in 2019 alone and been a key pillar in EOS’ success".

To mark the very special event EOS held it's own Awards Luncheon with guest speaker, EOS Board Director, Kate Lundy 

Speaking at the event Kavita said, "Since joining EOS twelve years ago I have enjoyed each and every day. The defence industry projects I work on are large, long-term and have a very clear outcome; to create technology that helps Defence Forces protect nations all around the world. I feel immensely proud to be contributing to this national safety. I feel honoured to have been selected as a nominee and award finalist and I was not expecting to get a very special mention of my work during the ceremony. I am very grateful but it's not just my work, it involves a lot of contribution by others.

I would like to thank Dr Ben Greene and Grant Sanderson for the opportunities they have given me to excel in my career. A special thanks too to Warwick Holloway who has always supported me, to my team who contributed much in my success, to all our supply chain partners, to ADM and to my family. Having grown in my career from the junior most level to my current designation was a long journey but throughout I have always carried the teachings of my parents to always work with integrity and honesty.”

At the event Kate presented Kavita and other award nominees with flowers.

L-R: Wanisa Deenang, Senior Production Engineer (Category: Engineering), Madeleine Gunning, Mechanical Design Drafter (Category: Rising Star), Pachinee Netwong, Assistant Production Manager (Category: Technical Trade)

L-R: Amy Chain, Senior Opto-Mechanical Engineer (Category: Engineer), Jo Ramsay, Global Marketing Director (Category: Communications), Kavita Gahlawat, General Manager Global Supply Chain (Category: Technical Trade)

Photos Credit: Kirsten Thompson, KJ Photography

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