Archives: fsc letters

TICKET OF THE WEEK
By Pierre-Martin Huet, SVP Global Supply Chain Michelin

Let's join forces to win the low carbon race!

The H2 Racing Truck from Gaussin has just successfully completed the twelve stages of the Dakar. It is the symbol of a first decarbonised edition of this mythical race.

We are all engaged in another must-win race: to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 at the latest. It's the UN-sponsored Target Zero Race. A coalition of leading zero-carbon initiatives includes 449 cities, 21 regions, 992 companies, 38 of the world's largest investors and 505 universities in 120 countries.  

The Supply Chain can act in this race of humanity to global challenges. A major lever: encourage alternative fuels and energies. Currently, members of France Supply Chain are responding to a call for tenders from the European Union to put 150 Hydrogen trucks on the road. The EU is subsidising one third of the price of the truck, i.e. 150 K€ per truck.

The goal? To move towards low-carbon solutions by 2023. Michelin, Vuitton, Pepsico - on the shippers' side - and Stef, FM Logistics, Combronde, Transalliance, Viapost, Miratrans, on the transporters' side, are already in the running. There are still 70 trucks to be financed by the end of February. Join us!

We need to go harder, faster.

The fate of the race is often decided at the start.

HIGHLIGHTS
Supply chains are being challenged by the consumer diktat

Can consumer behaviour lead producers to rethink their network design? This is what several studies conducted by different organisations tend to prove. Thus, according to a survey conducted for SOTI (1), the disruptions experienced by the global supply chain (shortage of means of transport, components, etc.) are pushing consumers to favour local products for reasons of speed and availability. More than half (57%) of them, faced with the unavailability of one or more items, say they have been forced to buy substitute products. More than a third (36%) of consumers will look elsewhere if an item takes longer than two days to be delivered or collected. In another study for SendCloud (2), 82% of internet shoppers regularly check return policies before placing an order. 72% even go so far as to stop their order if it is not clearly offered by the e-tailer. These figures are very interesting because they tell us that the price of the product is no longer as important in the purchase decision. Manufacturers and retailers must now adapt to new requirements: quality of service, product availability, delivery times, but also, as other reports show, consideration of environmental parameters. These are all reasons that will inexorably lead companies in the years to come to review their locations in order to get as close as possible to their catchment areas and to this demanding, capricious and sometimes even tyrannical character known as the consumer.

• SOTI: company offering IoT solutions
• SendCloud: shipping platform for e-commerce

NOT TO BE MISSED
Towards greener transport

On February 16, France Supply Chain and France Hydrogène will accompany the actors of the logistic chain of goods transport wishing to engage or already working on the topic of the electric truck with hydrogen for the goods transport.

Events

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BILLET OF THE WEEK
By Eric Le Mignon, General Manager Supply Chain Intermarché

"Supply Chain is a corporate culture"

At the end of December, the sale of self-tests in supermarkets was authorised until 31 January. The supply chain played a major and little-known role in this. At Intermarché, the objective is, as soon as a plane lands, to be able to deliver the 2160 points of sale throughout France, in 24 hours. As with the masks in March 2020, we need to be able to adapt permanently to unforeseen situations. We have used our national massification warehouse adapted to all suppliers with low rotations and volumes, and thus complement our trucks serving our 17 fresh bases in France every day.

There was no question of delivering full pallets, we had to respond and adapt to the needs of each POS, both Hyper and Express. Some have very little storage space and demand is therefore very variable. This organisational flexibility in the context of this crisis was magnified by 90% integrated logistics. 

This policy has given us an additional capacity to mobilise, motivate and raise awareness among all employees. When there is a fire, everyone is there! In 2020, on the first Saturday after the COVID, I was at a base in Saint Hilaire at 7.30am. I talked to three preparers in a preparation aisle. I asked them what they wanted to tell me. To sum up what I retained: one said "We are afraid", the second "We are present and we will do the job Mr. Le Mignon" and the third "Thank you for coming". This was the spirit that animated all my teams but I suppose also that of the other companies in the retail sector. After hearing this, I only had one desire: to go and visit all the bases in France.

HIGHLIGHT
The hunt for unicorns is on!

In the world of supply chain, spectacular fund-raising is taking place at a steady pace. Last week, for example, Exotec raised a whopping $335 million from an international pool of investors. Founded in 2014, this young French company, specialising in robotic order preparation, was at the same time valued at... 2 billion dollars and became de facto the first French industrial unicorn. A few days earlier, Project44, an IT company specialising in transport visibility and management, announced that it had raised $420 million. What does such financial operations inspire us? Long ignored by the world of finance, the supply chain has experienced during the Covid period a media coverage that has not left investors indifferent. Many of them have understood that when everything collapses, the Supply Chain world remains one of the few pillars on which society can still rely to survive. No doubt some will have seen it as a kind of El Dorado with a flamboyant and highly profitable future. This is partly true. And the sums invested will not fail to help certain companies to establish themselves permanently in the landscape. But let there be no mistake: a fund-raising event kicks off the race for profitability, which is all the harder to achieve the higher the initial investment and the higher the ambitions. For the lucky beneficiaries, a new challenge begins.

NOT TOBE MISSED
The heart of France Supply Chain

The Labs of France Supply Chain play a fundamental role in the functioning of the association. Driven by the collective intelligence of its members, they develop projects that provide sustainable solutions for the Supply Chain world: Digital and Technologies, Human Resources, Supply Chain 4 Good, ETI-PME and recently the Youth Lab.

Events

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BILLET OF THE WEEK
by Yann De Feraudy, President of France Supply Chain

"All my best wishes of joy, success and health to you and all your loved ones!
2021 is behind us and, if you are reading these lines, it is because you are holding in your hands the first copy of the weekly letter of France Supply Chain.
It is a project that is close to my heart because it will allow us to maintain a recurrent link and to talk about Supply Chain as we understand it in France Supply Chain. We have never talked so much about Supply and Logistics since the beginning of the pandemic, which is good. Our jobs are more visible, but still badly known.
We speak about it either in a very "commercial" way, each one boasting about achievements with such or such partner, or in a very fragmented way, transport here, warehousing there, without presenting the globality and transversality of the function which make it a powerful lever of transformation.
I thank the team of permanent staff, Valérie Macrez at the head and Jean-Philippe Guillaume for having accepted to take up this new challenge for our association which represents this weekly speech. Happy reading!"

HIGHLIGHTS
Record year for logistics real estate

With strong growth in recent years, logistics real estate has broken all records in 2022. This is what specialist firms such as EOL have observed: "The sector is growing rapidly: it is an all-time record and the best year since the advent of this market at the end of the 1990s. In France, more than 3,700,000 m² of buildings were the subject of a transaction, which represents an increase in take-up of 35% compared to 2020 and 12% compared to 2019 (reference year). According to CBRE, one of the main drivers of this market is e-commerce. Indeed, omnichannelity is forcing companies to review their organisations and redefine their logistic schemes. This is one of the reasons why investment in logistics has reached nearly €6.4 billion worldwide for the year 2021 and now represents 25% of the volume invested in commercial property. This good health of the sector also reflects a renewed confidence in logistics, which has demonstrated its importance throughout the health crisis. It should benefit a whole ecosystem of suppliers: forklift truck manufacturers, IT publishers, integrators of automated solutions, etc. In other words, 2022 is off to a good start, because it's well known that when (logistics) construction goes well... everything goes!

NOT TOBE MISSED
Creation of the Youth Lab

At the beginning of this year, France Supply Chain is pleased to announce the creation of a Lab for the young, by the young. Led by students, the Lab Jeunes aims to help future generations discover the Supply Chain.

Events

Find all the events around the Supply Chain.