The 2025 version is here

For a long time, the general public has been unaware of the activities of Freight Transport and Logistics, a fortiori of the Supply Chain, considering that it is above all about stewardship, handling activities and road routing.

THE SUPPLY CHAIN: A VISION THAT CANNOT REMAIN LIMITED TO THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

On 15 April, Vincent Barale, Supply Chain and Logistics Director, Louis Vuitton and François Peignes, VP Supply Chain Operations, Orano presented the results of workshops on the future of the Supply Chain.

Accompanied by Laurent Maudrux (Louis Vuitton) and Amélie Brault (Orano) they shared their experience of using Anaplan to manage their supply chain.

Find the replay of this webinar by filling in this form:

In view of the important development of France Supply Chain, which already federates 450 companies of all sizes (large groups, ETI, SMEs) and all sectors of activity, five new members are joining the Board of Directors of the Association.

Vincent LAMARCHE
VP Logistic Strategy & E2E network design - SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

Charles LEONARDI
General Manager Supply Chain - NESTLE

Éric LE MIGNON
General Manager Supply Chain - INTERMARCHE

Jean-Christophe MACHET
Chairman - FM LOGISTIC

Didier SCELLIER
Managing Director France - PTV GROUP

They join the 41 members of the Board of Directors and strengthen the 2 colleges that make up the Board:

• College 1 federating industrial companies, trading and distribution companies, logistics service providers and health structures;
• College 2 representing: service providers, associations, federations, research and training organisations and individuals.

These 5 appointments are part of the dynamics of France Supply Chain which helps companies to transform themselves, and relies on the strength of its network and the power of collective intelligence with a common ambition: the Supply Chain to change the world.

On July 2nd, France Supply Chain and its partner Wavestone organised a live webinar on Blockhain applied to the supply chain. Focus on the application of the technology in the sector, presented in a pragmatic and practical way.

Blockchain - a transparent and secure transaction validation and archiving technology that operates without a central control body - has been the subject of much discussion since its concept emerged in 2008. According to the 2021 edition of the Digitalisation Panorama, 36% of the companies surveyed consider it a priority, but it is still a subject that has not been widely exploited in the supply chain sector.

This is why, around Marc Dauga, Supply Chain partner at Wavestone and member of the Digital & Technologies Lab of France Supply Chain, three startups - Ownest, KeeeX and Crystalchain - came to present concrete cases of use of Blockchain in supply chain.

Improving stock management and making the supply chain more fluid

A real lever for creating value for the supply chain, capable of reducing risks and optimising ecosystems, Blockchain and its advantages - security, disintermediation and decentralisation - are slowly proving themselves in the sector. The proof is in the client case presented by Thibault Glaunez, CPO of Ownest, about SNCF Réseau, which has chosen to implement a solution developed by Ownest on its Moulin Neuf industrial site for the assembly of track elements (EIV), allowing the transfer of tokens, digitally transferable assets with a unique and unalterable identifier, content and an owner. Thus, each part exchanged between the site and the Moulin Neuf EIV warehouse is associated with a transfer of responsibilities: "When we transfer products, we also transfer the associated responsibility tokens. We have created a consensus with individual interests for each product transfer, in order to be able to trace them and secure the logistical flows," explains Thibault Glaunez. The results? Better stock management, a rate of non-conformity linked to the loss of a product divided by two, a reduction in product loss and the implementation of concrete KPIs of what is happening on the ground.

Facilitating the synchronisation of flows in multimodal transport

Then came the turn of the KeeeX company, which presented a project for the Grand Port Maritime de Marseille, based on multimodal transport. The objectives? To increase traffic while reducing transport times and costs and improving the environmental impact. To achieve this, KeeeX has developed a secure application that can be used by all types of users. "It allows users to connect to the system, flash the container number, perform various operations and add information to the chain in real time. Each addition made is signed by the person making it. Finally, among the major ROIs of this solution, we note a reduction in the number of transactions, a very strong increase in visibility rates and a synchronization of exchanges from 14% to 100%", underlines Cyprien Veyrat, VP Marketing and Pre sales at KeeeX.

Towards consumer products will be traced from end to end 

Finally, to close this round table discussion, Maxime Michelot, head of agri-food projects at Crystalchain, unveiled a project conducted with the company Raynal & Roquelaure. Here, from the farmer to the point of sale, all the players record their traceability information autonomously on a secure, reliable and distributed system. This information is then distributed to all the links in the chain. Together, the companies connect the data and add value to it in order to respond, among other things, to the problems of controlling health risks and making the supply chain more fluid. " Not only does this meet the consumer's need for transparency, but in addition, the platform makes it possible in just a few clicks to trace the entire traceability chain and to expose potential inconsistencies in terms of the quantity or even the origin of products," explains Maxime Michelot. "Our vision? Within 5 to 10 years, all consumer products will be traced from end to end," he concludes.

Finally, in order to provide more details on this increasingly important subject in the supply chain sector, France Supply Chain and Wavestone have also published a white paper which can be found below:

An essential lever for a more sustainable world, the Supply Chain is at the heart of business transformation. Driven by digitalisation, innovation and the need for a strong customer orientation, today's organisations must be resilient, agile and focused on the circular economy. These are new challenges that call for new professions.

At a time when many professions are disappearing while others are appearing*, there is one question that we, as Supply Chain professionals, are all asking ourselves: what are the professions that will make up the Supply Chain of tomorrow?

Although we do not claim to be able to read the future, our privileged position as the^leading French network of supply chain professionals combined with that of Michael Page, the leading firm in the market for the recruitment of experienced executives, invites us to engage in this exercise.

A series of interviews and workshops with our members, conducted and enriched by the observations of Michael Page, have enabled us to arrive at a list of four professions. Four key professions for the Supply Chain of tomorrow which, although they sometimes exist today, remain the prerogative of large structures with a relatively confidential position.

Because Supply Chain is a vital issue for companies, and because Human Resources are a necessary condition and are often the first concern of Supply Chain Managers**, we are pleased to share with you the fruit of our work and latest observations on the job market. We hope that this guide will enlighten you on the issues that we identify as essential to the evolution of our profession.

Blockchain is a technology that enables secure transactions in an ecosystem by making data transparent and unchangeable. It has taken off thanks to cryptocurrencies. It is starting to be used by companies to secure their supply chain.

According to the 2021 edition of the Digitalisation Panorama, which tracks the transformation of companies' supply chains, for 36% of the companies surveyed, blockchain is a priority project. This represents an increase of 7 points from 2019 to 2020.

Blockchain meets 3 business needs of the supply chain. It enables product authentication, traceability throughout the product life cycle and the monitoring of the responsibility of each of the players.

After sharing the level of maturity of companies, this white paper will detail the Blockchain technology. Then the supply chain use cases will be presented as well as the solution providers, among others, through the radar of the startups.

Driven by the development of e-commerce, accelerated by the crisis, the installation of automated handling systems in warehouses has increased by 46% in 2020*. Faced with this technological evolution of logistics, zoom in on efficient projects in line with the notion of environmental responsibility through a webinar organised by France Supply Chain's LAB Digital & Technologies and its partner EOL.

From 70 million euros in 2011 to 350,000 today. In just a few years, automation has exploded in France, driven by the development of offers and the growing interest of sectors such as food processing, distribution and e-commerce. In order to help these sectors, EOL, a specialist in business real estate, and France Supply Chain published a white paper last year, aimed at all professionals looking for mechanised, robotised and automated logistics solutions.

Today, in the face of the health crisis, in addition to economic performance, companies are also seeing CSR benefits in automated systems. Human safety, well-being at work and environmental impact now play a key role in the development of this type of project:

"The market's responsibility is to maintain confidence and sustain growth so that it bears new fruit, beneficial to society as a whole: business efficiency, supply chain optimisation, better service to consumers and greater control of environmental impact", introduces Etienne Webre, Director of the Evolis development division.

A sustainable and responsible supply chain to remain competitive

And to illustrate this, Viastore, VPK and Auchan France presented a project that is unprecedented in France. "This is a futuristic system, the first in France in corrugated cardboard logistics", begins Philippe Tran, General Manager of VPK France, corrugated cardboard. Developed by the intralogistics specialist Viastore, the project, which was launched with an investment of 20 million euros, covers an extension of 6,000 m² adjacent to the VPK production plant in Saint-Quentin (02). The latter can accommodate up to 25,000 pallets via an automatic warehouse consisting of six stacker cranes.

"100% of the stock was subcontracted to seven external warehouses, occupying six full-time shuttles with four different suppliers and causing as many stock shortages in the warehouses. It was therefore a very complicated and polluting process, generating an additional cost of 300,000 euros linked to external storage, trolleys, lorries, etc. At the same time, we were facing problems of non-quality and identification of pallet locations. Finally, our customer service rate for orders shipped on the desired day was only 75%", explains Philippe Tran.

Reconciling quality, economy and environment

The system is now operational and can store 55 different pallet formats in an intelligent way, putting an end to external storage. It includes robots that match and mismatch customer pallets with system pallets and build up the trucks in an optimised way, in the order and configuration to be put on the truck. "At the same time, VPK wanted to install a rainwater recovery system for the production of corrugated cardboard, directly on the roof of the warehouse. This system makes it possible to reconcile quality of service, economic criteria and the environment", continues Jean-David Attal, Managing Director of Viastore Systems France.

As for VPK's customer, Auchan France, the installation also gives him complete satisfaction: " It allows us to be delivered within the time limit, to have the best possible product freshness thanks to the FIFO set up, to benefit from a safety stock at the cardboard manufacturer to face possible peaks, to optimise the rate of good delivery (98%) but also to reduce the number of trucks on the road and to rely on longer batches to fight against the overconsumption of energy", testifies Olivier Grignon, buyer within the Auchan Group, VPK's customer. A promising project, which, if the sanitary conditions allow it, could be the subject of a visit organised by France Supply Chain.

Blockchain is a technology that enables secure transactions in an ecosystem by making data transparent and unchangeable. It has taken off thanks to cryptocurrencies. It is starting to be used by companies to secure their supply chain. According to the 2021 edition of the Digitalisation Panorama, which tracks the transformation of companies' supply chains, for 36% of the companies surveyed, blockchain is a priority project. This represents an increase of 7 points from 2019 to 2020.

Blockchain meets 3 business needs of the supply chain. It enables product authentication, traceability throughout the product life cycle and tracking the responsibility of each actor. After sharing the level of maturity of companies, this white paper will detail the Blockchain technology. Then, the Supply Chain use cases will be presented as well as the solution providers, among others through the radar of the startups.

Companies have understood this: the status quo is no longer an option! Between the climate emergency and the desire to consume more responsibly that is taking root in our societies, the world of the Supply Chain is not immune to these transformations and must reinvent itself to integrate this new situation.

After several months of work on this topic, Wavestone and France Supply Chain are proud to present their publication on the Green Tech Supply Chain Radar, during a webinar that will address these issues.