Board Member Profiles

Karl Braitberg

Karl Braitberg leads Cisco’s Worldwide Manufacturing Demand Management and Supply Chain Planning team. The team is responsible for leading the end-to-end processes essential to determining manufacturing, unit level demand for Cisco products, communicating the demand to the entire supply chain, and ensuring that supplies are available to meet the demand. His team is also responsible for designing strategic flexibility into the supply chain that enables Cisco to meet demand swings.

Since joining Cisco in 2005, Mr. Braitberg’s directive has been to define and create a world-class demand and supply planning organization and sustaining processes. To drive his charter, Mr. Braitberg initiated an ambitious, comprehensive program—Demand Management Excellence—to transform his global team. He formed specialized demand planning and supply planning teams, enabling cross-enterprise analysis and collaboration. He introduced co-planning and sales and operations planning methodologies to Cisco, adding new levels of collaboration with key customers and sales. Mr. Braitberg also nurtured the development of an analytical forecasting and modeling team that is providing unprecedented insight into future demand patterns using advanced time series techniques. The innovations that he has introduced are acknowledged by industry analysts as leading best practices and have led to direct operational and customer satisfaction improvements.

A recognized authority in supply chain management, Mr. Braitberg arrived at Cisco with more than 15 years of executive experience and proven expertise in the development and implementation of strategies and technology that drive improved supply chain performance. At Palm Inc., he held the position of vice president of global operations. In that role, he was responsible for managing the end-to-end supply chain, including demand and supply planning, factory execution, and customer fulfillment. Mr. Braitberg has also held key executive supply chain positions at LSI Logic Corporation, Symbios Logic, and NCR Corporation. His work on advanced forecasting and planning techniques has been featured in several key publications.

Mr. Braitberg holds a master’s degree in business administration and a bachelor of science degree in production and operations management from Colorado State University.