Author : webm@ster

On July¹, the ASLOG held a webinar to launch a major initiative to bring a new vision of the supply chain to a more resilient, collaborative, close, agile and sustainable world. A look back at the foundations of a necessary and ambitious project.

"For many, the crisis has been a real eye-opener, those who were doing less well are doing worse, those who were doing well are doing even better, just like digital commerce has really exploded," says Yann de Feraudy, President of ASLOG and Deputy CEO Operations & IT of Groupe Rocher. Thus, if the Covid-19 health crisis has highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of organizations, it has also and above all revealed the essential nature of the supply chain. This is an opportunity that ASLOG and its members want to exploit today in order to lead companies towards greater resilience, collaboration, agility, proximity and sustainability. In concrete terms, this webinar is therefore an opportunity to initiate the process of transformation and change for a better world, in which it will be accompanied in particular by the company Imfusio, an expert in transformation.

Sustainable performance at the heart of the supply chain of the future

Through fundamental questioning, ASLOG and its members intend to play on the four levers of sustainable performance: service, cash, costs and CSR. "The balance between service, costs and cash depends on the type of business the company operates. And even depending on the customers or products served, different balances and supply chain models will be sought. At Michelin, sustainability is at the center of this performance triangle," said Pierre-Martin Huet, Michelin's VP Global Supply Chain and a member of the ASLOG comex. "At LVMH, we position the supply chain as a lever for sustainable performance, in the economic, environmental and social sense of the term. At LVMH, we position supply chain as a lever for sustainable performance in the economic, environmental and social sense of the term. We therefore measure all the challenges of the supply chain as an organization in charge of helping to make the decisions underlying business management," adds Stéphanie Rott, LVMH's production and supply chain director and also a member of the ASLOG committee.

Based on this premise, how do the ASLOG and its members intend to act and co-construct this common vision for tomorrow? " We have defined five core beliefs: the customer, resilience, collaboration, talent and positive impact at the heart of environmental and societal impact strategies," explains Pierre-Martin Huet. "Diversity within groups is key. Through the principle of collective intelligence, different points of view, angles and horizons, we will achieve a most relevant vision," says Audrey Saget of Imfusio.

From vision to action

In concrete terms, the ASLOG has been putting its words into action since the beginning of the summer. Following the launch webinar, four days of workshops were held at the beginning of July, and at the end of August, two more days of reflection were held. "We do not claim to hold the absolute truth, but we want to bring out recommendations, driven by five factors: concern for the common good; values of transparency and collaboration; the will to act; the desire to stimulate debate; and subsidiarity. All of the avenues explored will then be taken up in our various labs," explains Yann de Feraudy.

On September 10, ASLOG will then address its stakeholders, public authorities and spheres of influence to share the fruits of its collective work. Once consolidated at the end of 2020, the project will be put into action as early as 2021, on the occasion of the ASLOG Congress. At the same time, the association is considering working, through its international body, with other European organizations. The objective is to take this approach beyond our borders and turn it into a project that is as global as it is sustainable.

SUPPLY CHAIN TRANSFORMATION - ISSUES - PRIORITIES - HUMAN RESOURCES RESOURCES

The Logistics and Transport sectors represent 10% of the French GDP and around 10% of jobs in the commercial sector. If we consider our Supply Chain universes, we are talking about more than 2 million jobs with a strong growth potential over the next few years. Based on this observation, France Supply Chain by Aslog conducted a survey among its members during the summer of 2019 to understand and grasp the challenges of human resources management for Supply Chain and Logistics.

The survey is based on 3 main themes:

THE CHALLENGES
facing businesses

THE SOLUTIONS
envisaged by the latter to meet their human resources challenges

THE RESPONSES
expected in recruitment

Some see it as a project, others as a concrete project, and the last as a source of questions. The IoT for Supply Chain has been attracting the interest of the sector for many years. On the occasion of the "Rencontres du Digital", the ASLOG/FRANCE SUPPLY CHAIN and the consulting firm Wavestone returned to the subject through a dedicated webinar.

The crisis will have proved it. Despite its resilience, the supply chain still needs to develop its velocity, i.e. its agility and efficiency, to function optimally despite the disruptions. And to do this, the IoT is proving to be a powerful tool. Marc Dauga and Pierre-Yves Audoy, respectively Partner Supply Chain and Manager Manufacturing at Wavestone, and Francois Martin-Festa, VP Digital Customer Experience at Schneider Electric and Head of the Digital Lab at Aslog/France Supply Chain, led a dedicated webinar on this topic on June 24.

The objective? To share the keys to asking the right questions and making the right choice of dedicated solutions. " Above all, it is essential to start from a business need, to frame it, to feed a precise specification and to know the ecosystem of the players in order to choose the one best suited to your needs," emphasizes Marc Dauga after recalling the main principles of the IoT for supply chain, namely the collection and analysis of data from an IoT object placed on a handling unit (pallets, racks, bins, products).

Tobetter understand
the technological bricks related to IoT

The three experts are unanimous in their view that conducting an IoT project can be complex. The first difficulty is the growing number of players offering their services. Marc Dauga notes "a 60% growth in five years in the number of start-ups in the sector. ». The second challenge is to understand and get to know the technology, which is evolving very quickly. In addition to continuous technological progress, Marc Dauga identifies 3 major breakthroughs: the 5G network, nano satellite and edge computing. As for the technological building blocks, they can be divided into four:

• The IoT object, its lifespan, its cost, its conditions of use and its collection and storage capacity.
• The network and data transport and the need to think about the distance between the object and the network, the data rate, the energy consumption and the precision objectives of geolocation.

• The IoT platform and its hosting location, its management of the life cycle of dedicated objects, its ability to integrate new types, to manage an increase in the volume of data and the number of APIs it can provide.
• Data application for use cases, i.e. web interface as well as supply chain tools such as TMS, WMS, MES...

Identify and choose the right partner(s)
to optimize your supply chain with IoT

Once carefully selected and mastered, these bricks give rise to an IoT solution that addresses use cases with a virtuous impact on the transformation of the supply chain. Marc Dauga discusses product tracking (outdoor or indoor), product tracing, but also improving efficiency through inventory management, maintenance or even the piloting of the energy performance of buildings. And to best choose its service providers and partners in the start-up of an IoT project, Wavestone has identified about 50 French start-ups operating in the business, only on the BtoB market, with at least eight years of existence and less than 50 employees. "These elements provide the keys to asking the right questions, to better segment a project according to the 4 major dimensions of the IoT and to draw up a complete panorama of French start-ups on this subject", Francois Martin-Festa concludes.

The Wavestone-France Supply Chain white paper and radar are available on the website

On June 18, the ASLOG/FRANCE SUPPLY CHAIN organized its first webinar after the deconfinement. On this occasion, the association's HR Lab once again stressed the importance of the men and women who have acted to ensure the continuity of economic activity in France.

Moderated by Philippe Raynaud, VP Supply Chain Europe Asia Pacific at BIC, in charge of the HR Lab and a member of the ASLOG/FRANCE SUPPLY CHAIN Executive Committee, the webinar was designed to share in a qualitative and privileged way the feedback from teams that have been working together during the crisis. The first testimonial was from the luxury brand Louis Vuitton, through the voice of Stéphane Fallon, Logistics Director: "During this period, we were able to rely on important prerequisites: a good social climate and a relationship of trust throughout the chain of command. Our employees needed to feel listened to and, paradoxically, to have a manager capable of guiding and reassuring them," he continues. To do this, the group acted quickly. From February 24, a crisis unit was formed and debriefed every morning. " Our management and our teams have enabled us to keep our warehouses safe," explains Didier Renard, Warehouse and E-commerce Manager Europe at Louis Vuitton.

From service providers to partners

Another case in point, in the Oise region, at the heart of one of Covid-19's first clusters, is the collaboration between a client, Pierre de Saint Victor, Supply Services Director France & Benelux within the consumer goods group Reckitt Benckiser and its logistics provider, Vincent Derebergue, Director of the FM Logistic platform in Crépy-en-Valois: "We experienced the crisis about 15 days before everyone else in Crépy-en-Valois, but despite everything, our entire management team was there and our employees showed great resilience. The whole site understood the role it had to play," says Vincent Derebergue. For the teams at FM Logistic and RB, the result was a change in the way they work together, with transparency and trust. "We've gone from being a service provider to a partner," says Derebergue. Pierre de Saint Victor confirms this: "We have emerged from this crisis stronger in the concept of responsible collaboration.

Making the link

Finally, Alexandre Berger, Business Unit Director - Logistics Solutions and Local Transport at La Poste Group, explained how the Group has managed to develop new services for citizens around the delivery of meals, shopping and medicines at home: "The fact that La Poste has been designated a vital interest organisation has been a motivation for the employees. This definition of our priorities has generated a real vocation to create new services", he explains. Thus, from this unprecedented experience, Alexandre Berger will retain the notion of "link". A link that the HR Lab of ASLOG/FRANCE SUPPLY CHAIN intends to strengthen by continuing its work through the publication of the panorama of Human Resources in supply chain and the first guide to supply chain higher education in France from the beginning of July.