Cincinnati Ohio Economic Development

P&G opened its N.A. supply chain planning center at its Winton Hill campus

David Holthaus • Cincinnati.com
Hundreds of Procter & Gamble employees and VIPs, including Ohio Gov. John Kasich, inaugurated a new P&G project Friday that is expected to bring about 350 new jobs to the region.

P&G has opened its North American supply chain planning center at its Winton Hill campus, the result of a consolidation of 40 offices into the Cincinnati site.

The consolidation will mean 350 new jobs that will pay an average of $34 an hour, said Elizabeth Radke, director of the center. She would not provide a range of salaries.

Another 300 jobs will move from other sites in Ohio, many of them from P&G’s Governor’s Hill offices in Mason, where its U.S. trucking and transportation work is managed.

Another 200 supply planning jobs already work at Winton Hill and other sites in Cincinnati, including the downtown headquarters. By the summer of 2012, about 850 such jobs will be based at the Winton Hill center.

It is the first of what will be six to eight P&G planning centers around the world, Radke said. The work involves planning the on-time delivery of millions of P&G products from factories to distributors to retailers, as well as forecasting demand for its products.

P&G has already held two job fairs to staff the center. Among those already hired is Ayesha Bahar, a 26-year-old who is a material supply analyst. She plans and tracks the materials that are used to manufacture P&G’s Tide Stain Release product. She was hired in January after working as a staffing coordinator at a local hospital.

CEO Bob McDonald said employees at the center will digitize their work, using real-time information to schedule truck shipments of supplies and products and reducing the number of empty truckloads.

Kasich praised McDonald, whom he recently appointed to the board of his JobsOhio economic development program, for consolidating the work to P&G’s headquarters city.

He suggested there may be more to come from P&G. “We’re going to do more,” he told the crowd. “We’re going to bring more of them home to Cincinnati.”

P&G has undertaken a $20 million renovation at the Winton Hill campus to create workspace for the logistics employees. The first phase opened in March. The site, off Center Hill Road, is part of a 265-acre campus containing 13 buildings of labs and offices.

The state of Ohio in April 2010, under the administration of Gov. Ted Strickland, agreed to award more than $18 million in tax credits to lure the project here. Cincinnati competed with sites in Nashville, Austin, Dallas and Raleigh, N.C. to win the project, P&G said.

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