With the Covid-19 pandemic and the War in Ukraine, the tension in the supply chain has increased a notch, both on the supplier side. In this first podcast, Olivier Fiquet looks back on the relationship he maintains, as CIO, with his suppliers. The company he works for is in close relationships with thousands of suppliers who have very different technological maturities. While some have already started their transformation, this is not necessarily the case for others who need support. Let's find out what techniques Olivier Fiquet used to reduce as much as possible The tension in the supply chain.
Faced with the lack of reference and maturity of this first link in the supply chain, it is interesting to see that a group's IT department is eager to help its suppliers make technological choices or use good platforms. To keep customer promises in terms of costs and deadlines, Olivier Fiquet and his teams want to obtain as much information as possible about the reception of raw materials. Without having a digitized supply chain, this is not possible.
For example, Olivier Fiquet presents his project: with the help of his teams, he has set up a specific and adapted tool for his suppliers. This solution aims to relaunch them using notifications and emails so that they can send all the necessary information on time regarding the arrival of raw materials. By sending a notification at the right time, suppliers are in the know and can meet deadlines.
At the same time, The challenge at the data level is very important. At times, businesses or suppliers do not obtain the necessary data on time, which breaks the supply chain. In other situations, she is left with a very large amount of information that is not necessarily structured. The difficulty lies in selecting and classifying data, in fully understanding what is urgent or important for the supply chain to be efficient. The relationship between businesses and suppliers is a pillar for the transition to Industry 4.0
Daniel Freyd looks back on the thirty years when his company was in constant transformation. Since his arrival, twenty years ago, he and all his teams have worked enormously to develop the Supply chain. From modeling the layout of living rooms to installing furniture, each link in the supply chain was supported by the IT department:
In addition, depending on the time of the year, the supply chain and the production chain are more or less stressed. With the other business departments, the IT department takes the time to find solutions, whether at the level of human resources (recruitment of operators, adapted training, workforce management, etc.), but also at the level of suppliers (also take into account their calendar) and data (order taking, confirmation, follow-up).
We clearly see all the difficulty and the many parameters that the company had to take into account in order to optimize the supply chain. It is impressive to see how the information system is embedded in all stages of the supply chain to provide as much information as possible.
The CIO of Fuji Electric France, Pierre Duriez, explains to us how his subsidiary managed to break away from production line of the parent company by setting up its own production chain. The French branch of this company decided to call on the IT Department to achieve this. Pierre Duriez's teams led the way in structuring the project team:
First, there was a work around the use of bricks that can communicate with each other. The objective is to provide assistance to the various business units working in the production chain in their daily tasks. To choose these solutions, the IT department went through a Technology watch active, based on real experiences and not only on the presentations that editors can make. In particular, they tested several solutions in order to compare them using proofs of concept and contacted companies that exploited solutions that interested them. Instead of having an all-in-one solution that is much more complex to handle, it has a “Lego IS” whose bricks are connected to each other.
Second, he was interested in the collaboration that exists between the various entities and these different business components. In both collaborations, the main challenge is the transfer (sending and receiving) of data and information. By working around data flows, the IT department has ensured that each entity can easily access the data that concerns it. By mastering the data, the company also has the possibility of tracking all the actions and actions of each link in the production chain. This makes it possible to have access to detailed reports or dashboards and therefore to promote decision-making to improve the performance of the chain.
Thirdly, the DSI looked at the following question: How to prioritize continuous improvement projects? Depending on the importance of the projects, they are prioritized according to the time spent on their implementation. The very short-term projection is imposed for daily tasks or for problems that need to be solved very quickly. The medium-term projection allows you to leave yourself a little more time to improve or renew the existing one. Finally, long-term projection makes it possible to launch structuring projects (new functionalities, new building blocks, etc.).
Serge Maurey, CIO of the CMR group, asked himself the same question for a long time: should he work to structure his IS in a single block or should it be composed of numerous technological building blocks? Rather than adopting an “all-in-one” software suite from a single publisher, he is wondering what building blocks he can use around a centralized ERP.
Let's go back to the example presented by Serge Maurey: when he arrived at this company, the firm's CIO relied on a central ERP managing a good part of the business needs but not all of them. In addition to this, some solutions peripheral to this ERP were already used by the businesses. By taking the time to analyze its IS base, Serge Maurey took into account that the IS was already in the form of a model Best of Breed. He involved his teams in order to perfect it.
Two significant changes allowing the implementation of a more pronounced best of breed model, calling into question the scope of the ERP:
Thus, we can see that the implementation of a monolith model is tending to disappear in favor of the best of breed model. The real question is to define the field of action of ERP and to know if more and more building blocks are being proposed for business departments. This question seems to guide CIOs for an industrial company to move towards Industry 4.0
Here is a concrete example of transformation towards Industry 4.0: when the business and the IT Department join forces and collaborate to design a service together, for its customers. This is the case of the company Sames Kremlin with the marketing & innovation department of Thibault Cognon. The latter asked Jean-Stève Hadjistavrou's information systems department in order to automate the control of industrial robots.
The twofold objective of this project is as follows: Addressing the lack of qualified staff and avoid wasting time in the training of new operators. So by working hand in hand, marketing and the IT department They work for the business.
As part of this relationship, each department contributed its part to the building and supported the other so that everyone could put their skills to the benefit of the project. Marketing has provided the IT department with as much information as possible in order to facilitate its work by being present in factories. This presence allowed the marketing department to make decisions about the progress of the project. On the other hand, the IT department focused on the entire technological aspect of the project. The two entities teamed up by always asking the same question: what do we want to achieve in the end?
The two entities jointly established the technical and legal constraints related to the project in order to make informed progress. Combining the IT department and business management in order to achieve the same goal made it possible to create a new customer service.
Alexis de Nervaux, who has already spoken on the CIO Revolution podcast (ep.16 - “Having the CIO & CDO double hat”) returns in this season dedicated to the digital revolution in industry. He talks about one of his latest projects that he has been thinking about for several months now. This project is based on the following constant: avoid the slightest machine failure causing delays in production. As a result of a snowball effect, deadlines are not respected, which can affect brand image.
La connected maintenance consists of anticipate machine failures. By going in the event of a failure or malfunction, it is possible to initiate the necessary repairs so that they never occur. Well-chosen, connected maintenance solutions are a real aid for decision-making in critical situations. Of course, for this to work, the solution chosen must be as efficient as possible, even though the machine park is very heterogeneous. Alexis de Nervaux has embarked on a strict selection process:
Ironically, since these tests are successful while shedding light on this technology to factories and operators, some factories wanted to take over this project much more quickly than Alexis de Nervaux had planned. At times, it is difficult to involve professionals in certain projects, but when these projects work and are of interest to the professions, the professions take the time to be interested in them. Sometimes, there can be a rush in the deployment of the solution, as businesses absolutely want to acquire the tool. It is up to the IT department to put the brakes on the game and ensure that the deployment goes as well as possible.
Connected maintenance and, more generally, artificial intelligence tools or tools linked to the Internet of Things are concrete examples showing that innovation can help businesses transform.
On February 21, 2021, the Manutan company was hit hard by the DoppelPaymer ransomware. Sylvain Coquio, CIO of the Manutan group, spoke about how the company bounced back after suffering such an attack. After a long restructuring at the level of its cybersecurity, Manutan has been able to recover and bounce back based on four fundamental pillars:
Thanks to concrete work carried out around these four pillars, Manutan managed to recover after suffering a large-scale attack. Unintentionally, this cyberattack also proved that all business entities were able to collaborate and work together to solve problems while transforming the business. Cybersecurity is a key issue for Industry 4.0.
In this last podcast, Emmanuel Artigue, CIO of Toupret, discusses the IS challenges of an SME that is becoming an ETI. This is a key moment in the life of a company where IT has its full role to play. Thanks to its international deployment, the company has been growing steadily for almost 20 years and has recently succeeded in crossing the threshold of 250 employees.
Emmanuel Artigue's IT department tries to support the company's subsidiaries in their transformation strategy while managing their hypergrowth. These subsidiaries are semi-integrated: while some of them have decided to integrate the parent company's ERP, others have chosen to be independent because of their size or because of the specificity of the market in which they are located. To try to “fight” against the expansion of shadow IT, Emmanuel Artigue preferred adapt, live with, and support these entities in order to provide them with maximum agility.
In order to accelerate the transformation of the company, he was obliged to outsource certain skills, in order to go from 90% of internal skills to a perfect balance between external and internal skills. Ultimately, he wants nearly two-thirds of the skills to be outsourced so that internal teams can focus on structuring projects that are linked to the growth of the company.
For Emmanuel Artigue, the DSI is supporting this transition from SME to ETI grace With multiple hats of the role he plays. It combines the profiles of the technologist (as an IT specialist), the strategist (the one who will constantly ask himself how IT will contribute to the business) and the operational (to ensure that the corporate culture evolves towards transformation). It is with a CIO driving the transformation through the various hats he owns that companies are transitioning to Industry 4.0.
