Chris Tyas awarded with an Order of the British Empire

January 13th, 2021, Amsterdam — Chris Tyas, member of the o9 Executive Council, has been awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) during the New Years Honours for his services to the Food Supply Chain during the COVID-19 crisis.

As former SVP and Global Supply Chain Head of Nestle, Chris was appointed by the UK government in March to lead the war room responsible for unifying the agri-food supply chain. With panic-buying and predictions of shortages, the Food’s War room was formed with the sole mission of maintaining the food security of the nation.

Chris’s leadership of the farm to fork group with the Government has brought about industry changing levels of collaboration including the agreement of common COVID safe working conditions safeguarding the health of essential workers and shoppers alike.

The focus of this “war room” has shifted from reacting to the pandemic to planning the Brexit transition. Chris says, “There are many aspects of consumer behaviour that have changed in the last nine months that will stay with us, including the huge increase in online and home delivery.”

In February, Chris Tyas joined the o9 Executive Council to share his expertise and actionable insights with operational leaders of the world’s biggest enterprises. The o9 Executive Council’s mission is to help define the future of digital transformation for planning and operations, guiding industry leaders to be more efficient and profitable, but also utilize the earth’s resources sustainably and responsibly.

Together with other council members, Chris has been valuable in the conversation around o9’s “digital brain” and next-generation integrated business planning processes.

"The need for the industry to respond much more rapidly to changes in consumer behaviour and simultaneous supply and resource constraints has made the concept of the digital brain, which encompasses demand and supply, even more important going forward."

Chris TyasFormer SVP and Global Supply Chain Head of Nestle

Stephan de Barse, EVP at o9, says, “We are honored to have Chris as a part of our Executive Council. Chris, while having 40 years of experience, represents the future. The way he has helped the UK to keep food available for all people is remarkable and an example to all of us. His learnings have further confirmed the need for a digital brain.“

"Big and small enterprises need to connect real-time data to planning and decision-making. We enable this with our digital brain, and Chris is instrumental in educating governments and organizations on how to make this happen."

Stephan de BarseEVP at o9 Solutions

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About the author

o9 Solutions

The Digital Brain Platform

o9 offers a leading AI-powered Planning, Analytics & Data platform called the Digital Brain that helps companies across industry verticals transform traditionally slow and siloed planning into smart, integrated and intelligent planning and decision making across the core supply chain, commercial and P&L functions. With o9’s Digital Brain platform, companies are able to achieve game-changing improvements in quality of data, ability to detect demand and supply risks and opportunities earlier, forecast demand more accurately, evaluate what-if scenarios in real time, match demand and supply intelligently and drive alignment and collaboration across customers, internal stakeholders and suppliers around the integrated supply chain and commercial plans and decisions. Supported by a global ecosystem of partners, o9’s innovative delivery methodology helps companies achieve quick impact in customer service, inventory levels, resource utilization, as well as ESG and financial KPIs—while enabling a long-term, sustainable transformation of their end-to-end planning and decision-making capabilities.