Max Caballero-Vieyra

Throughout his entire career, Max Caballero-Vieyra, SVP Devices & Supply Chain at T-Mobile, explains that the industry’s innovation has always been one of his biggest sources of inspiration.

“What inspires me is the innovation in this field. I still find it very exciting when our partners bring new, creative ways for consumers to use their devices,” Caballero-Vieyra explains. 

“I find that tremendously exciting, and I look forward to the next wave of innovation over the next 10 years – to see what else is going to come in devices and in the experiences that we're going to go through as consumers with mobile devices.”

Caballero-Vieyra is responsible for managing T-Mobile’s complete portfolio of devices – including devices, tablets, watches and routers – as well as the portfolio design, the negotiation with the partners, and the selection process across multiple channels. 

“It involves everything that has to do with the operations, whether it's for logistics, reverse logistics, inventory management, and so on,” Caballero-Vieyra explains. “We manage thousands of retail doors, big web, and telesales avenues, so we fulfil every single channel that T-Mobile operates.”

The complexities of T-Mobile's consumer supply chain come from managing a large network of partners as well as thousands of retail locations. Alongside this, T-Mobile is working to ensure that it can supply all the products that are needed as quickly as possible, while offering the best possible value to its customers. 

“We deliver our best quality of service by ensuring we understand our customers, and giving them optionality – whether it's in products or price points – and making sure that, whatever interaction they have with T-Mobile, whether it's in a retail point of sale, in the web, in our telesales, or in an app, we can always fulfil their product needs safely and as fast as possible.”

Navigating the decade’s biggest supply chain challenges

In such a dynamic and global role, it is highly telling to learn that Caballero-Vieyra’s proudest achievement comes from the way that T-Mobile navigated the COVID-19 crisis. 

“The US market is very, very big. Between 2020 and 2021, I was managing the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint – integrating processes and consolidating infrastructure – while the world was going through a pandemic,” Caballero-Vieyra explains. 

“Being able to succeed and keep the business stable with operations working flawlessly, while navigating the volatility in the system for at least a year, was very hard. Probably that was the most demanding job I've ever had.”

Caballero-Vieyra explains how one of the critical learnings that supply chains gained from this situation was the need to constantly rethink diversifying to avoid risk.

“Supplier diversity becomes crucial to minimise those unexpected events. So we implement that across every step of the process – from the moment we are designing a portfolio of products, we start thinking, ‘What would happen if we go through a repeat of 2020 and 2021?’.”

“When you go through a shock to the system, like the pandemic, it brings that supplier diversity and risk management to the forefront of your thinking.”

Read the full story HERE.