John Kroll

John Kroll is not easy to put in a box, and that is exactly what makes him valuable. His career began in systems analysis and IT management before moving into materials management and, finally, operations leadership, giving him a rare ability to see the technical and the operational as one connected system. He has put that to work at ILLING for 15 years.

For a decade, John served as ILLING’s Director of Operations, overseeing five facilities across Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Georgia, and Missouri. He built strong regional teams, trusted them, and kept them moving, including through some of ILLING’s more complex operational moments: the simultaneous closure of the Missouri facility and consolidation into a newly relocated Atlanta operation, and the consolidation of three facilities into a new headquarters in Richfield, WI. The measure of that leadership was never control. It was coordination.

Today, as Business Analyst, John manages stocking levels, runs ILLING’s cycle count program (a rigorous internal audit that catches receiving, shipment, location, and fulfillment errors before they reach customers), and is developing a pricing automation system that handles supplier-specific increase structures across the full product base. It is detail-oriented, process-driven work, and John is built for it.

He grew up in Algoma, Wisconsin, a small Lake Michigan town he calls honest and hard-working, and he hopes a little of that rubbed off. On weekends, he and his wife are usually on their Harley-Davidson Street Glide, winding through Wisconsin’s back roads and stopping at wineries along the way.

The Missouri-to-Atlanta consolidation. One of John’s defining projects as Director of Operations: the simultaneous closure of the Sikeston, Missouri facility and its consolidation into a newly relocated Atlanta operation. Two major moves in a single window, with no disruption to customers. As John tells it, the team was all engaged and kept on track, which is exactly how he leads: coordination over control.

A cycle count program that catches errors first. John runs ILLING’s cycle count program, a continuous internal audit that surfaces receiving, shipment, location, and fulfillment errors before they become customer problems. When a count turns up an over-delivery, customer service follows up directly: if the customer received it, ILLING bills for it rather than writing it off. A small story that says something large about how he operates.

Pricing automation, in development. John is in early development on a pricing automation system that will let ILLING update prices to individual supplier movement, handling both per-pound and percentage-based increases across the supplier base at once. It sits right at the intersection of operational discipline and technical problem-solving, which is his wheelhouse.