MES President & CEO, Hiten Shah Featured in World Leaders Magazine

LEWIS CENTER, Ohio, Sept. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- MES President, and CEO Hiten Shah began his career as a plastics engineer, but he has held a variety of positions throughout the years, including manager, process engineer, and vice president of sales. When Hiten quit his job in December 2001, he had the option of working with a couple of other rivals, but he preferred to work on his own as a consultant and focus on honing his networking and sales abilities, which he did for many years. In the year 2006, Hiten traveled to India to search for supplies for a machine shop owned by one of his friends. He identified a few decent suppliers, but the company decided to go to the Chinese market. He says, "Then, I didn't know much about India and many of the other firms I was calling on in lighting, agricultural and medical were seeking an Indian supplier. I know what excellent factories look like. And it turned into more of a rep relationship."

For a business leader, every day is a new challenge. Over the past 14 years of MES, Inc.'s scaling, Hiten has certainly faced a lot of challenges that have taught him some great lessons. These challenges include picking the wrong team member, working with the wrong supplier, pursuing the wrong customer, and taking some preventable risks. Hiten quickly learned how to be much better at the briefing and recruiting experts to avoid some of the early problems he encountered. For him, the other constant challenge is always staying ahead of the curve, whether it is in technical development or interpreting market conditions, including the regulatory environment. He knows how to overcome possible obstacles. He leads as a strong leader who is always up to date on all the pertinent factors and inspires the same behaviour in his team. He says, "I think what really amounts to, at the end of the day, is having a very good, engaged team of people that care about their work that can help us navigate that can be reactive."

His business, MES, currently employs 150 people internationally. The talented staff of the company includes six sigma engineers, sourcing experts, quality inspectors, supply chain experts, sales and account managers, business analysts, and support staff to ensure best-in-class metrics for the work the company does. MES strives to acquire talented and skilled employees through all the media available in all of the international locations it operates in. Hiten says, "We have people from all over the world on our payroll; we like to be good community members. We offer best-in-class facilities to our employees with good benefits. We are diversified in terms of the different supplier-side networks that we can build; we are also very diversified in terms of our customers."

At present, Hiten is primarily focused on three key areas. The first one is hiring. It focuses on hiring new talent, who can find a place in the company and help it to become more innovative. The second one is acquisitions, where Hiten is looking for new opportunities and sectors to expand the company's boundaries; right now, his focus is on software. The third is masterminding and planning with the sales team on creating new prospects to increase the customer base, and building strong relationships with existing ones. He asserts, "New business initiatives, sales and hiring, and a little bit of time are on key escalations." He further adds, "I usually get engaged in customer dealings such as shipping surcharges, or raw material issues. Things like these are escalated to me."

"We don't live to work, we work to live." Hiten follows the previous statement as his work philosophy. While leading a company, there is no assurance of limited work hours. He believes that being a manager does not mean there are only 30-40 hours working in a week. Sometimes the team has to work 45, 60, or even 70 hours a week. Hiten works by keeping key priorities in his mind. He believes, "A fair amount of my work is done when I'm alone. So, I tried the day times, but they are mostly filled up with predetermined meetings." He further adds, "I'd say 30 to 50% of my days are probably booked one week or two weeks in advance (deleted)."

Last year, MES bought several new software for warehouse management, forecasting, sales order automation and packaging optimizations. The company did HR transformation, and over the last several years, the company has done all of its marketing reports in automated formats by adding technologies like Power BI and all other advanced tools for business intelligence reports. The company also has a ERP system and follows order management by using different software tools, and it implements this system in all its companies globally.

Media Contact

Zach Hamner, MES Inc, 6142904142, [email protected]

SOURCE MES Inc