ThroughPut Inc. Appoints the former Vice-Chairman of Bank of America and Distinguished Business Finance Expert, Luke Helms, to its Advisory Board

September 17, 2020 · 5 minutes
By Tina
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PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — ThroughPut Inc., the Industrial AI Supply Chain pioneer, today announced the appointment of Luke Helms to its Advisory Board. Mr. Helms is the former Vice-Chairman at Bank of America, Vice-Chairman of KeyBank, Chairman and CEO of Seafirst Bank, and a Board Member of LifeLock, ABM Industries, and Manulife.

Mr. Helms brings with him five decades of deep domain expertise in the Banking, Insurance, Industrial Finance and Facilities Management sectors. He has also served as an Investor and Chairperson of several fast-scaling entrepreneurial private powerhouses, such as LifeLock, a pioneer in identity theft protection, with venture capital funding from Bessemer Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Symantec Corporation and River Street Management, before its IPO on the NYSE in 2012 and acquisition by Norton and Broadcom in 2017. Throughout his illustrious business career, Mr. Helms has also served on educational, nonprofit and philanthropic Boards, including the University of San Francisco, the Washington State University Foundation, the University of Washington Foundation, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Children’s Hospital, the Seattle Art Museum, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, and the University of Arizona School of Business.

As ThroughPut continues to grow its strength with seasoned executive leadership, a stellar team of proven entrepreneurs, an Advisory Board of global domain experts, and a premier cap-table of global angel investors and family offices, new investors and venture capitalists have also discovered its massive market potential and product lead. ThroughPut’s team is backed by some of the best domain experts from Operations, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Artificial Intelligence and Finance, who have put that knowledge to work in over a dozen successful startups. Mr. Helms joining the Advisory Board further reinforces ThroughPut’s mission to create the leading AI software platform connecting disparate data sets for Supply Chain, Operational and Financial Excellence. 

“So much of what we do at ThroughPut ultimately helps businesses improve their Free Cash Flow, EBITDA and Earnings Per Share Performance,” said Ali Raza, founding CEO of ThroughPut. “Where contemporary data systems fail to predict, we have always advocated for strong risk management, insurance fundamentals and a holistic view of operations across the end-to-end supply chain using all data sources. Perhaps no one in our network understands this approach better than Mr. Helms, with decades of leadership at some of the world’s most reputable financial institutions helping other organizations to financially succeed. This is an area we have much to learn from Mr. Helms, and it is an honor to have him on the Advisory Board to help guide ThroughPut on maximizing its positive impact on the finances and operations of global industrial organizations.”

“I am excited to join the ThroughPut team as a Senior Advisor,” added Mr. Helms. “What appeals most to me is their approach of tying operational frontline data to financial bottom line impact, and thus ultimately profitability and a company’s Earnings Per Share. This is the holy grail of the finance world where quality-of-earnings meets quality-of-operations. I am impressed by how ThroughPut’s AI can analyze all the existing disparate data systems of any company to accelerate both cash flow improvements and profitability. The ability to have a dynamic dashboard at the C-Suite level to view supply chain performance and P&L performance in the same software provides a multi-dimensional view to operations management that is unprecedented and an aggregated single source of truth. The fact the operations management recommendations are built on leading operational excellence philosophies also brings digitized standardization to management at a facility level. I am eager to further contribute and remain actively involved where Industrial AI intersects with pioneering FinTech.”

Seth Page, the COO and Head of Corporate Development & Partnerships at ThroughPut Inc., continued,  “With the recent wave of accelerated enterprise transformation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic fallout, Silicon Valley VCs have finally tuned-in to the fact that the largest operational gains actually lie across the end-to-end Supply Chain. Hence they are now looking towards B2B start-ups with unique domain expertise and proven Industrial AI solutions, versus the high-profile, growth-at-all-costs, negative-return B2C deals of yesteryear. Luke’s addition to ThroughPut’s distinguished Advisory Board is testimony to the fact that the greatest financial gains of AI on global industry output come from the Manufacturing, Logistics, and Wholesale sectors, where they contribute more than half of the $56 Trillion in output gains from AI by 2035. We look forward to a successful collaboration with Luke and the ThroughPut team in scaling the company to another startup juggernaut, providing a positive measurable impact on organizations worldwide, while delivering far superior investor returns long-term.”

About ThroughPut Inc. :

ThroughPut Inc. is the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Operations pioneer that enables companies to leverage their existing data systems to increase output, quality, and profitability across their end-to-end Supply Chains. ThroughPut’s Operations AI Product, ELI, includes the only Bottleneck Management System (BMS) that utilizes existing enterprise data systems, such as ERP, MES, IMS, TMS, WMS, PLC, EAM, POS, CRM, SCADA, Historian, and other data systems, to solve for the $25 Trillion of annual Waste across global supply chains already today. Such constraints to the $90 Trillion global GDP could otherwise be dedicated to more productive and useful purposes to the benefit of all stakeholders. ThroughPut.AI’s software is designed by Fortune 500 Supply Chain & Logistics leaders, Silicon Valley analytics and AI experts, and top global Operations & Experts in the areas of Lean Manufacturing, the Theory of Constraints, Supply Chain Automation, Total Quality Management, and over 4 dozen leading best practices now digitized in the ELI product, with hundreds of years of combined experience in the space. ELI thinks like an operations manager and automatically provides domain expertise, executable insights, quantitative cost-benefit analysis, and recommendations in real-time, which current static Business Intelligence and Analytics tools do not effectively capture nor act upon. ThroughPut.AI’s dynamic insights include real-time resource allocation recommendations, granular root cause identification, and operational process stability analysis. ELI enables Process Improvement Experts and Operations Managers to reduce cycle times and operational unpredictability across some of the most advanced process industries, including manufacturing, logistics, automotive & transportation, aerospace & aviation, chemical processing, energy & utilities, oil & gas, and others.

More information about ThroughPut.AI is available at: www.throughput.ai

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