One on One with Wilson Perumal & Company's Chris Seifert

Spend eight years running logistics for the U.S. Navy on a nuclear submarine and you're likely to develop an eye for efficiency. That's exactly how WP&C's Chris Seifert got his start, and he's been helping companies improve operational processes ever since. After the Navy he worked at Georgia-Pacific and Owens Corning, during which he earned a reputation as someone who could spot inefficiencies and help turn plants around. Seifert saw WP&C as aligned with his entrepreneurial bent and an opportunity to put his industry experience to good use. He joined the firm in 2012 as a consultant and now just three years later has been promoted to Partner. Talk about efficient. Consulting sat down with Seifert to talk about his new role and the importance of operational efficiency.

Consulting: How'd you go from a nuclear submarine to a consulting firm?

Seifert: When I'd gotten off the submarine I was teaching at the Navy Supply Corp School in Athens, Georgia while I finished my MBA. Then I went into industry working for Georgia-Pacific, where I spent a little bit of time in a strategy role at the plywood division level. I eventually ended up running a plant just outside Houston, then another one in Dudley, N.C. Then I was recruited by Owens Corning, and I ran their largest residential fiberglass insulation plant in Dallas. So I managed three different plants in a period of five years and had begun to get a reputation for being good at turning around plants. All three of them were not very well performing when I took them over; Owens-Corning plant had about a 66 percent asset utilization, within a year we were in high 80s, touching low 90s on a regular basis. I was starting to see the writing on the wall that this was going to be my career. About the same time a Navy friend of mine had interviewed with W&P and gave them my name. I had always wanted to do something more entrepreneurial.