Biography

Allan Kohl,
President and C.E.O.

Allan Kohl is President and Chief Executive Officer of KOM International responsible for the company's operations. Mr. Kohl works out of corporate headquarters in the Montreal office and overseeing operations in the Montreal, Toronto, and Mexico City corporate offices.

As President, CEO Mr. Kohl brings extensive experience to this role, as he originally joined KOM International in 1972 as a project manager. Mr. Kohl has since managed several hundred logistics and warehouse consulting projects involving completely automated materials handling systems, warehouse management systems, radio frequency and bar coding technologies, mechanized sortation facilities and other advanced distribution concepts. Over the past 43 years, Mr. Kohl has consulted for some of the largest and most sophisticated distribution firms in Canada, United States, Europe and Asia.

As a Senior Partner at KOM International, Mr. Kohl manages a team of professional logisticians dedicated to serving clients across diversified sectors of the economy including manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers in the grocery, food service, apparel, recorded music/video, books, sporting goods, firearms, automotive parts, mail order, health and beauty care, pharmaceuticals, and government.

Mr. Kohl has been published in numerous distribution trade journals and has been a featured speaker at industry trade shows including FMI, IFDA and WERC.

Mr. Kohl has a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering, a Diploma in Management and a Master of Business Administration from McGill University.

Biography

Maria Castro
Partner, Mexico

Practise Leader – Mexico & Latin America
Maria Castro is a Senior Partner at KOM International leading the practice in Mexico and Latin America.

Her responsibilities as Senior Partner include business development for KOM International  as well as planning and development of supply chain projects.

María has more than 25 years of experience in supply chain, operations and process reengineering for leading Latin American companies across a wide variety of industry segments.

She has successfully participated in more than 300 projects involving routing strategy design, forecasting and distribution planning, GPS technology implementation, transportation management and costs optimization, strategic network analysis, greenfield and brownfield distribution center design, material flux optimization and warehouse at industrial plants and WMS-OMS-MRP-DRP-ERP software implementation.

María’s mother’s tongue is Spanish and she is fluent in English, German and French. She has a B.S in Industrial and systems engineering at ITESM Monterrey and a postgraduate program in Framework process systems at the Hochschule Wismar in Germany. She’s published in logistics magazines and specialized media. Maria enjoys traveling and spending  time with her family and friends.

Biography

Peter Reed
Senior Partner

Practise Leader - Food Logistics
Peter Reed is Senior Partner at KOM International. As Practice Leader – Food Logistics Mr. Reed’s overall Supply Chain and Distribution experience ensures his understanding of the unique operational and practical needs of the business, the material handling systems and details of facility design for each of the mandates he undertakes.

Peter’s corporate career in logistics, warehousing and distribution spans 38 years of hands-on experience in various roles with the leading Canadian grocery retailer, Sobeys (and previously the Oshawa Group); including over 20 years as Vice President of Logistics Engineering with full responsibility for the development of the company’s Logistics Network of over 20 distribution centers.

During his corporate career Mr. Reed worked to establish and expand this network including 3 fully automated, state of the art, distribution centers, and 4 DCs built to LEED standards.

The senior management team contributions Peter made at Oshawa and Sobeys, reporting to the company President or CFO, significantly enhanced the success of both organizations. Peter has stayed abreast of leading edge developments in the Logistics industry resulting in some of the first installations of warehouse management systems and engineered labor standards in the grocery industry in Canada.

The fully automated grocery distribution centers operated by Sobeys were conceived of by Peter and were designed and constructed under his direction.

Peter Reed is now considered a leader in the field of retail distribution automation. Following his consulting role managing the design process for Sobeys’ 3rd automated facility, furthering his knowledge of leading edge developments, Peter joined the KOM team in 2014 and offers our clients his considerable expertise.