How to Make Continuous Improvement a Daily Routine in Warehousing

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

What does continuous improvement really look like in warehousing? For Ifti Hussain, Warehouse Operations & Continuous Improvement Manager at Mondelēz International, it starts with making improvement part of the everyday rhythm. Drawing on more than a decade of experience across logistics, manufacturing, planning and operations, Ifti shares how strong leadership, empowered teams and a focus on root-cause problem solving can turn everyday warehouse challenges into opportunities to improve; because when you build capability into people and process every single day, you make MDLZ future-ready.

Tell us something about yourself and your journey at Mondelēz International.

I joined Mondelēz in 2012, and I've never sat still in one lane here: Sales, Logistics, Demand, HQSE, Manufacturing, Planning, and I'm glad I haven't. Each move gave me a different lens on the same business, and I carry all of them into how I lead warehouse operations today. I don't think of myself as running a warehouse; I think of myself as running a piece of something much bigger, and that's what's kept me energised for this long. My mantra through all of it has stayed the same: "Everything starts and ends with Leadership."

As a Warehouse Operations & CI Manager, you play a key role in driving excellence in logistics. What does “excellence’ mean to you in this context?

To me, it's not a destination, it's a habit of not settling. Excellence is a mindset that drives the outcome, not the other way round, chase the result directly and it slips away; build the mindset first and the result follows. Safety that's never up for negotiation, service that customers can rely on without thinking about it, and cost that keeps getting better without anyone cutting corners to get there. The real tell isn’t that the headline win, it's whether the everyday numbers stay strong when no one's watching, and whether the team holds the standards because they believe in it, not because I'm asking them to.

How do you balance day-to-day warehouse management with long-term continuous improvement initiatives?

Honestly, I don't treat them as two things to balance. I build improvement into the rhythm of the day so it's never competing with it. Good daily management and structured problem-solving mean today's issues become tomorrow's improvement projects instead of just repeating themselves. The real discipline is protecting the team's time to think and improve when the site's under pressure, because that's exactly when it's tempting to drop it, and exactly when it pays off most.

What skills are essential for successfully leading both operations and continuous improvement in a logistics environment?

For me, it comes down to three things.

Being able to talk to an operator on the floor and a director in the same afternoon without changing who I am in either room. Getting to know people on a human level is key. Leading people in a way that builds their capability, not just their compliance, so improvement doesn't rely on one person pushing it.

Secondly, patience - the kind that stops you slapping a quick fix on a problem before you understand it properly, and the discipline to get to the actual root cause rather than settling for the symptom.

And finally, enough cross-functional understanding to know how a warehouse decision lands elsewhere in the business, so the work stays aligned rather than optimised in a bubble.

How do you engage and motivate warehouse teams to embrace new processes, technologies, or improvement ideas?

People back what they've helped build, not what's handed to them. So I bring the team in early, I'm straight with them about why something's changing, and I make sure the ideas on the floor are genuinely theirs and not just mine with their name on it. My leadership philosophy is servant-visionary at its core; they don't work for me, I work for them. My job is to remove barriers standing between them and executing at the highest level, not to stand above them directing traffic. Recognition must be real and specific too; generic praise doesn't land. Leading from behind, clearing the path rather than pointing at it, is what earns the trust to try something new.

Looking back, which moment or achievement in your logistics career has been the most rewarding for you personally?

It's never the individual win that stays with me, it's watching people I've developed step into a bigger role, stop escalating what they can now solve themselves, and start leading improvement of their own. Hitting a milestone feels good in the moment. Building the people who go on to beat it is what actually lasts.

Finally, we say YOU Make MDLZ (our new employee value proposition). With everything you've experienced and achieved here, how do you feel you bring that to life?

For me, it's bringing a whole-business mindset to a site role; treating the warehouse as a lever for the supply chain, not just a cost to manage. It's leading through culture and people as much as through process and holding myself to the same bar I set for the team: "good enough" is the bare minimum never to settle for, and always be building the next leader alongside the next improvement.