🔍 This article was co-created with Daniel Mendoza, general manager of Suministros Weston, a major abrasives converter in Mexico. Daniel has more than 25 years of regional experience, including developing business for German multinationals with industrial operations in 18 countries.
🎙️ Keru Podcast is a series of conversations (in Spanish) with industrial leaders from Latin America about management, technology and decision-making in complex environments.
Problem / challenge: Growing without losing operational focus in the B2B manufacturing industry in Latin America
In the context of the B2B manufacturing industry in Latin America, scaling an operation is not simply a sales challenge. It is a test of organizational design. The conversation with Daniel Mendoza reveals the permanent tension regional leaders go through when expansion becomes structurally more complex than the market itself.
“When a company grows too fast, it isn’t the competition that holds it back: it’s its own internal chaos.”
Daniel Mendoza not only took on the challenge of leading a regional operational expansion across 18 countries, but did so without losing focus on efficiency, profitability and operational consistency. As an industrial commercial general manager, he understands that poorly orchestrated commercial growth creates friction, conflicting priorities and, eventually, the loss of competitive advantage.
Reflections on the problem: Leading from structure, not from Excel
Traditional leadership —based on control through indicators— becomes obsolete when an organization crosses the threshold of regional complexity. Daniel Mendoza Mexico states that the real challenge of the industrial commercial general manager is not delegating, but aligning. It is not centralizing, but designing autonomy with purpose.
“Today leadership isn’t about physical presence. It’s about structural clarity. You have to help each area know why and what for it does what it does..”**
This is where a key concept comes in: the organization as an adaptive system. In the B2B manufacturing industry in Latin America, markets are asynchronous, labor laws differ and logistics channels are fragmented. Trying to apply a single model to every country means forcing the structure until it breaks.
The systemic reading that Daniel Mendoza adopts comes from authors such as Margaret J. Wheatley, who argues that effective leadership is based on understanding how local decisions affect the global dynamics of the system. A promotion in Mexico can trigger a talent drain in Colombia; a pricing policy in Chile can shut down a channel in Peru.
This way of thinking is essential for any industrial commercial general manager who manages regional operational expansion without losing strategic coherence. According to Mendoza, modern leadership requires operating as a designer of contexts, not as a crisis solver.
Solutions and applications within the company
a) Building a common vision with shared objectives
Methodology applied: OKR (Objectives & Key Results)
Reference author: John Doerr – Measure What Matters
Daniel Mendoza implemented a system of shared objectives that respects operational autonomy while maintaining strategic alignment. The OKR model allowed him to translate the regional strategy into key results per country, without falling into micromanagement or losing focus.
“Each country must have its operational freedom, but everyone has to row in the same direction.”
This framework was key to avoiding deviations such as overselling without technical support or over-optimizing logistics at the expense of the commercial promise. The result was an operating model in which sales, finance and operations share a common roadmap, even in very different national realities.
b) Modular expansion with the principle of operational scalability
Methodology applied: Business Model Canvas + Design for Scalability
The regional operational expansion was not a “copy-paste” of the central model. It was modular engineering, where each new unit in Latin America was designed as an autonomous system that could nonetheless be assembled into the global model. Daniel Mendoza defined a minimum viable architecture:
- Technical structure
- Logistics flow
- Financial support
- Industrial customer service manuals
“Scaling isn’t replicating. It’s designing structures that can be assembled without collapsing.”
🧾 c) Commercial management with profitability indicators, not just sales
Methodology applied: Contribution margin metrics + Commercial ROI + Asset turnover
Reference author: Peter Drucker – The Effective Executive (1966)
One of Daniel Mendoza’s most significant contributions has been the redesign of the commercial management system. As an industrial commercial general manager, he replaced the traditional “volume selling” approach with a model of profitability analysis by customer, segment and life cycle. This vision is aligned with the best practices of industrial companies operating in volatile environments, where selling more is not enough and it is necessary to guarantee liquidity, efficiency and sustainable value.
“A sale that isn’t collected on time is a trap disguised as an achievement.”
In practice, this meant breaking down revenue by strategic business units, differentiating sales by technical channel, volume, specialized solution and level of service. Each customer was analyzed with a net profitability matrix, incorporating:
- Real cost of technical service (after-sales, specialized support, engineering visits)
- Average collection time (DSO)
- Effective turnover level at the customer’s plant
- Logistics cost of delivery and return (in consignment or trial operations)
Thanks to this model, Daniel Mendoza managed to consolidate a commercial decision-making system that prioritizes customers with high structural return, discourages sales with negative profitability and improves working capital management.
He also linked this system to the regional ERP, generating visual dashboards that are reviewed every two weeks with country managers. This coordination made it possible to detect commercial leakage points (unprofitable customers, hidden logistics overruns, promotions without return) and replace them with incentives for sustainable sales.
🔁 d) Outsourcing decisions based on structural analysis
Methodology applied: Strategic Sourcing + Make or Buy Analysis
Reference author: Kenneth Lysons – Purchasing and Supply Chain Management (2000)
During the regional operational expansion stage, Daniel Mendoza faced a tension common to industrial companies in Latin America: how to scale without losing control. One of his key decisions was to professionalize the outsourcing criteria in each new country.
“You don’t outsource to save money, but to be able to grow without drowning.”
Applying structural analysis matrices, Daniel evaluated processes based on:
- Operational risk (stoppages due to supplier failure)
- Level of technical specialization required
- Impact on organizational culture and quality control
- Availability of local supervision and supplier maturity
This approach made it possible to outsource activities such as reverse logistics, machinery installation and field technical support, while keeping application engineering, demand planning and management of critical customers in-house.
As a result, the B2B manufacturing industry in Latin America benefited from a lighter, more adaptable and value-focused network of operations. In addition, the outsourcing agreements were designed with structural KPIs, agile termination clauses and monthly joint review committees. This flexible governance was a key enabler for maintaining operational consistency without overloading the central units.
🛠️ e) Training the team in a systemic commercial vision
Methodology applied: Systemic Thinking + Cross-training of middle managers
Reference author: Peter Senge – The Fifth Discipline (1990)
Daniel Mendoza maintains that operations management in Latin America fails not for lack of effort, but for lack of synchronization. That is why he prioritized developing systemic competencies in his regional teams, aligning not only what is done, but how each role within the organization is understood.
“A manager who only leads their own area doesn’t add value. They have to understand how they impact the whole.”
This translated into an annual training program that includes:
- Cross-planning sessions (sales–logistics–finance)
- Analysis of inter-area conflicts as learning cases
- Simulations of structural decision-making by country
- Evaluation of the impact of each KPI on business results
The goal was not only to improve technical skills, but to foster a mindset of shared responsibility. For the sales manager to understand how their promise impacts inventory. For logistics to be able to anticipate demand peaks. For finance to interpret the needs of the commercial team without friction.
In this sense, Daniel Mendoza’s experience has shown that the B2B manufacturing industry in Latin America needs middle managers who think like operational strategists, not like executors in functional silos.
He also promoted shared learning meetings between countries, where each unit presented its mistakes, successes and the methodologies it had implemented. This circulation of knowledge made it possible to accelerate collective learning and reduce repeated mistakes.
Final reflection and an invitation to think further
Daniel Mendoza represents an increasingly necessary figure in the B2B manufacturing industry in Latin America: the industrial commercial general manager who not only generates growth, but sustains it on a coherent architecture. His approach is not based on personal charisma or isolated intuition, but on replicable operating principles, rigorous measurement and structural consistency.
“There is no commercial strategy without operational coherence. There is no expansion without a decision architecture.”
In his vision, leadership is design. And regional operational expansion is only sustainable if every decision has anticipated consequences, aligned resources and a shared purpose.
“Every expansion strategy requires a synchronized operation and a decision architecture aligned with purpose, in order to achieve truly sustainable growth.”
Operations management in Latin America demands leaders who know how to read systems, facilitate synergies and sustain cultures that prioritize impact over noise. In times when scaling seems to be the only strategic verb, Daniel Mendoza proposes a different grammar: scaling with meaning, with focus, with structure.
🔁 Keru is a podcast created by Globalita.io, where we talk with those who lead Latin American industry from the inside.
Is your company ready to scale without losing focus, profitability and structural coherence?
Daniel Mendoza Rebolledo is a Colombian professional with extensive experience in commercial and operational management in the industrial and supplies sector. He began his career in technical manufacturing environments and evolved toward a hybrid profile that integrates engineering, sales and logistics, standing out for his ability to facilitate sustainable agreements and promote collaborative cultures. He is currently Regional Director at BCM Latinoamérica, leading operations in 18 countries. His approach combines multiregional commercial expansion, data-driven planning and the use of ERP systems to ensure traceability and efficiency. He has implemented methodologies such as cross KPIs and “six-eyes” meetings to align critical areas, and he prioritizes leadership based on trust, autonomy and strategic vision.
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