POWERING UP THE SUPPLY CHAIN

Karen Fritz On How Supply Chain Helps To Support Energy Transition

From the age of five, Karen Fritz dreamed of becoming an architect. Fritz has long been interested in art, building, and structures. She came from a largely blue-collar family – her father was a welder, and her uncle owned a concrete company – and she was drawn to the notion of building things.

“I love doing art,” she says. “I’m not the best artist, I’m not a true artist, like most successful architects. I think it just drew me.”

To pursue her dream, Fritz enrolled in the architecture program at Toronto Metropolitan University, then known as Ryerson University. Then, during the program, Fritz had a change of heart and plans. She realized that, compared to many of her peers in the course, while she was good at the design aspect of architecture, she truly excelled in other areas. She steered her education away from architecture and into a different stream. At the time, she didn’t realize that shift in direction would lead eventually to a career in supply chain.

“About halfway through the program, I really figured out that I liked project management and construction,” Fritz says of her decision.

“So, I graduated with a degree in project management instead of architecture and I worked in construction for a few years. I really liked it. And then I had an opportunity to come to Ontario Power Generation and work here as a planner and coordinator. And so, 25 years later, I’m still here.”

Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is a Crown corporation and “government business enterprise” responsible for about half of the electricity generation of Ontario. It has about 10,000 employees. It’s generation portfolio includes 66 hydroelectric stations, two nuclear stations, and one each of biomass, solar and dual-fuelled (oil and gas) stations. It also operates four combined cycle gas turbine generating stations through its subsidiary, Atura Power.

Fritz spent much of the first 20 years of her career at OPG working in planning, project management, construction, and other areas. Her portfolio included multi-billion-dollar projects such as “outages” – in which a reactor undergoes service and major refurbishment.

After her first two decades at the company, Fritz took a position in supply chain as OPG’s chief supply officer. The move followed Fritz’s successful management of several large commercial contracts on a project. During her time at OPG, she has worked at all three of the large nuclear facilities in Ontario – the Bruce, Pickering, and Darlington facilities. Fritz views herself as embedded in the province’s nuclear industry, and she also realizes that a corporate role in supply chain at OPG means that her and her team’s work affects the entire organization.

“OPG is quite a large company, we have about 10,000 employees, over 100 sites in the province, so, my team supports everybody,” she says.

Since starting in the role five years ago, Fritz has also been active with industry organizations. She sits on three boards, including the Supply Chain Management Ontario (SCMAO) board. She has taken several courses and executive programs, including through the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

She has also taken courses offered through OPG, such as the company’s five-month internal nuclear operations course for management, held at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa. The course is designed for management employees who will never actually work in the control room of one of the organization’s facilities, but who may need to be involved in making decisions related to operations.

“It’s been a lot of internal development,” she says. “OPG is fairly strong at doing that.”

A Mixed Routine

With about 300 people working on her team, each day brings a mix of tasks and routine, Fritz says. The enterprise-wide focus of her position sees her travel to sites across the province It’s a routine that can see Fritz divide her time between her Toronto office, or one of the organization’s renewable-generation (RG) facilities which includes hydroelectric facilities or nuclear plants.

She also spends time in vendor meetings discussing performance and future plans with them. Her role involves visiting potential vendors to see what they do in their shops, as well as what they manufacture. Other times, Fritz meets with vendors onsite, while they’re working on some of OPG’s major projects.

“(It involves) talking to the project teams about performance of vendors – any challenges that we’re having,” she says. “And really, a lot of our vendors are very close partners. We’ve worked together for decades. It’s really about helping them be successful, and vice versa.”

She also recently visited GE Hitachi’s headquarters in North Carolina to discuss supply chains for small modular reactors in Canada and across North America. As part of her duties, Fritz also attends industry conferences. Those events can see her speaking on panels and working to forge connections, particularly with diverse and Indigenous businesses. Last December, she spoke at a conference in the UK regarding international advanced manufacturing for the nuclear industry. She and others were able to visit other nuclear facilities, including an operating plant and a fuel facility.

The year before that, Fritz attended the World Nuclear Exhibition in Paris, the “event of the year” in the nuclear industry. The event can draw 800 nuclear vendors, and as many as 80,000 attendees over three days.

“People want to talk to OPG,” Fritz says. “People want to talk to me about how they can work with OPG. So, it’s about going to find vendors. But also, just providing the platform so people can have conversations and find out more about us. People have a lot of questions about nuclear and about our hydroelectric development projects. OPG is also working on hydrogen and electrification through some of our subsidiaries. So, there are lots of questions, and there are lots of supply chain questions, as well.”

Several projects stand out as career highlights for Fritz, including working on refurbishing OPG’s Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, located on the shores of Lake Ontario, east of Toronto. The $12.8-billion refurbishment represents the largest clean energy project in Canada, Fritz says, noting her role on the project included working on a significant turbine generator upgrade.

“It was tons of fun, and I worked with vendors in five different countries around the world,” she says. “That project is still in flight because it’s on four units at that power plant. And making a difference at Darlington so that we can have clean energy coming out of that power plant for the next 30 years, that’s really the contribution that we all make, but particularly in that role.”

Another career highlight came in October 2021, when OPG released its Reconciliation Action Plan, Fritz says. The organization has also committed to growing its economic impact for Indigenous communities and businesses to $1 billion over the next 10 years. The company went from having, at one time, almost no Indigenous vendors, particularly in the nuclear field, to last year hitting its purchase order target as well as exceeding its target for new vendors brought on board.

“I feel like that is one of the best things that I’ve been able to contribute to at OPG in the last few years,” Fritz said.

Positively affecting communities is important at OPG, Fritz notes, and she especially appreciates that the organization includes Indigenous companies in its operations.

Fritz considers herself fortunate for the opportunity to appear on Bears’ Lair, a television series appearing on the Aboriginal People’s Television Network (APTN). The show is similar to CBC’s Dragons’ Den, in which entrepreneurs pitch their ideas and products to a panel of judges. Fritz appeared as a guest judge, or Bear.

“I met a lot of great Indigenous leaders and Indigenous entrepreneurs,” she says of the experience. “I’d have to say that was definitely a highlight, something that you don’t get to do every day.”

The plants that OPG operates require materials that get consumed rapidly, Fritz notes. That makes security of supply especially important to the organization. Yet that security can be threatened if material is unavailable due to a rail strike or border closure. OPG has in place risk mitigation plans to help ensure that continuity.

“It’s my job to make sure low-cost electricity is provided to the people of Ontario, including high-quality products to maintain security of supply,” she says.

Vendor relations are critical to organizations in helping to ensure that security, she says. It’s essential to understand vendors’ challenges and capacity, as well as what’s happening in the market, such as global market commodity fluctuations, supply volumes and so on.

“We need to make sure that we understand what’s happening in the markets for the materials that we use, and we don’t get surprised,” Fritz says.

Staying Involved

Looking to the future, Fritz says that she wants to continue her work on the boards of various organizations. She has been on SCMAO’s finance and audit committee for two years and has just recently begun a term on its board of directors.

When she first got involved with SCMAO, she knew less than she does now about the supply chain field, she says. Yet, at the time, she had worked at OPG plants for years and already realized that the organization had an outstanding supply chain.

“But other than that, I didn’t know too much about it,” she says. “So, I reached out to the organization (SMCAO) and started going to some of their events. Then, right at the time when I became chief supply officer, I saw the board member posting, so I applied. At the time, I was asked to be on the finance and audit committee as sort of a start, and really loved that experience. And so, I applied to be a board member and was accepted.”

She looks forward to learning more about the industry, she says, while connecting with peers through the organization. “I’ve found that it’s very helpful for me in that way.”

Fritz is on a few other boards, including for Ivy Charging Network, a company owned by OPG and Hydro One, as well as PowerON, a subsidiary of OPG that, among other projects, is working to electrify the Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) fleet.

Fritz wants to continue working with Indigenous communities to provide economic opportunities and engagement as they partner with the energy industry. She would also like to work on business development projects with Indigenous and diverse leaders, as well as building a supply chain for small modular reactors across Canada.

Supply chain organizations operate in myriad industries. Yet some of the challenges that practitioners face are relevant regardless of the industry.

A trait that has served Fritz well during her professional life is curiosity about what is happening in supply chain, she notes. Speaking with other supply chain professionals across industries to learn about what they’re doing regarding warehousing, data management and analytics, or other areas, has benefitted her in her own role at OPG

“Just how do logistics work? How does a freighter make it from Europe through the St. Lawrence to get basic things to us? It’s important to be really curious about how things get to us and what’s happening in the markets,” she says. “And, in terms of getting into supply chain, certainly SCMAO offers professional training.”

Supply chain is also a field that offers many potential directions for practitioners to take, depending on their professional interests. Competency in skills in areas like commercial management, contracts, negotiations, and market information can help those looking to develop their careers, Fritz says.

Those skills are in such high demand that some supply chain positions remain vacant for months because of the challenge in finding someone with knowledge of, for example, market commodity intelligence, she notes.

“Experts in this field have a lot of opportunity across the global market and it’s important to hire and retain key professionals with these skill sets to support the energy transition in Ontario,” she says.

Outside of work, Fritz and her husband, Grant, have been married for 20 years, and enjoy travelling – mainly to Nova Scotia –with their 10-year-old son, Kenzie. She enjoys surfing in Nova Scotia as well as on Lake Huron, and Kenzie is currently also learning the sport. The family also has a Whippet puppy, named Ghost.

Overall, Fritz says she has enjoyed her time in supply chain. Her impression of the field has changed over the past five years regarding the value it brings to a business and an enterprise.

“It’s important for supply chain to not be so reactionary but, more so, to be a forward-looking organization,” she says. “Supply chain always needs to consider global impacts on behalf of the organization in order to set up an enterprise for success. I really think that if someone wants to get into supply chain and they have a strategic mind and enjoy looking at very big-picture problems and challenges, it’s a very exciting place to work, so I highly recommend it.” SP