The Missing Links. Caroline Mondon

      One week later, Pierre spends his first afternoon with the company, starting with a meeting with Héloïse in her father’s office. He wears a gray suit and a white shirt. Since the weather remains cloudy, he also wears a long trench coat. “But it’s perfectly pressed,” thinks Héloïse. “No one will ever suspect he’s a detective.”

      Pierre is carrying a briefcase filled with books. “Since our meeting, I’ve been cramming in as much study as I can of the concepts, methods, and tools one uses in quality and lean management, logistics, and supply chain management, so I can better understand Thierry’s profession. To find this material, I went to the associations that promote current internationally recognized standards. These associations gather recent case studies to build these bodies of knowledge. Then they publish the best practices, which we can use as a benchmark.”

      “A benchmark? How can we use that to run a business?”

      “In any situation where you want to know what to do to improve, you need to get a sense of where you stand compared to where you want to be. In business, this means ‘benchmarking’—comparing your company to an excellent organization that uses best practices. This is obviously only valuable if these best practices are continuously updated with scientific progress successfully tested by the practitioners, of course.”

      Héloïse thinks for a moment and then speaks.

      “Yes. The supervisor of the wood shop, Roger, who is also responsible for quality control, brought this up the other day. He probably already has these documents, but I don’t think he’s read them. By the way, who wrote them? A bunch of technocrats who use a lot of jargon?”

      “No. Apparently, they’re written by current practitioners and recognized experts who come together as volunteers to share their experience and expertise and to share them in simple language. I bought these books since, as a quality consultant, I’m supposed to be using them.”

      Pierre takes three books out of his bag. “This first one is about total-quality management.” He smiles as he exaggerates the word “total.” “It describes a business through all of its processes. It’s very structured. This second one is about lean management and is very pragmatic. It talks about how a ‘lean’ company is achieved through a state of mind—not just by using the right tools and methods. Both of these books reflect the foundation of companies that perform well, in manufacturing and also in the service sector. There’s a third book here of cartoons about quality management. I like it. It offers common-sense examples of how people’s attitude can make processes robust or fragile. It may seem too simple, but as my brother used to say, ‘It’s easy to make things hard, but it’s hard to make things easy.’”

      Héloïse looks somewhat disillusioned. “I’ve spent half my time in this place for almost three weeks. Frankly, I haven’t noticed that anyone here is particularly obsessed with simplicity, or ‘lean,’ as you call it. I’ve been watching them. Everyone in their own little corner, working away fastidiously. And why? Just because they’ve always done it that way or because they want to prove that their job is more important than anyone else’s. If there’s a problem, they spend more time looking for a scapegoat than helping customers. It’s like musicians in an orchestra who each play their part independently, without considering what the audience is hearing. In fact, if they didn’t have any customers at all that would probably suit them just fine.”

      Pierre laughs. “That makes me think of what I’ve read about the virtues of a systemic approach, and the way the logistics manager should apply it. Even though you might think that logistics management is the oldest profession in the world, if I can put it that way, it’s currently changing very quickly. Even people who do this job don’t seem clear about what to call themselves. Information technology has developed lightning-fast in the current context of globalization. This makes the management of tensions where the links of the supply chain interface in their logistics activities¹ possible in real time. So we still need ‘logistics managers,’ obviously, but more and more companies seem to need ‘supply chain managers’ to manage the supply chain of customer demand, especially if the chain is complex and international. But I’m not really sure when to use which term. It seems to depend on the amount of connections.”

      Héloïse looks at him questioningly, and Pierre continues: “We understand, of course, what logistics means in a military context. It’s the art of combining all the means of transporting, supplying, and housing troops to support them for victory. Like Napoleon said, ‘An army marches on its stomach.’” He chuckles. “The same concept applied to business is, obviously, not so different. The goal is to respond to a demand—in your case, an order that has to be delivered. To deliver the product, you need to transport it. Before you can transport it, you need to have manufactured it—either when you receive the order or in advance by having it in stock, if the customer doesn’t want to wait. To manufacture it, you need to have the workforce, the facilities, and the machinery. You also need to have acquired your raw materials or components on time or have them in stock already. As for labor, you need to have hired workers far enough in advance that they can be properly trained. These steps constitute ‘links’ that form a ‘chain,’ and that chain needs to be managed to supply the customer demand through what we, in fact, call ‘supply chain management.’ Maybe it should have been called ‘supply/demand chain management.’”

      Pierre notices that Héloïse has started to doodle on a piece of paper. He speaks louder. “Obviously, all of these contingencies require skills in strategic planning and operational scheduling and on how to connect the two. To synchronize the internal and external means of production, collaboration skills—or ‘soft skills,’ as they are called—are also critical. It’s no longer enough to employ a logistics manager to simply execute orders by managing the means of storage, transport, and production in a fragmented way. Nowadays, the physical flow, the information flow, and even the financial flow must be synchronized, and this is the main role of the supply chain manager: to continuously adapt to external and internal changes. And if these flows aren’t ‘lean’—that is to say, aren’t synchronized with the customers’ needs and free of waste—and if the processes of the company are not under control, the poor supply chain manager is reduced to trying to organize chaos.”

      Héloïse looks pensive. She pushes her paper across the table to Pierre and asks, “So that’s why it’s called a chain. Everyone knows the strength of a chain isn’t equal to the sum of the strengths of all its links; it’s only as strong as its weakest link.”

      After a glance at Héloïse’s drawing, Pierre exclaims, “Yes ... but again, with globalization and information technologies, supply chains shouldn’t be thought of as chains but rather as complex networks, like a web, that must adapt continuously, like living bodies do.”

      Héloïse straightens up and pushes the paper brusquely aside. “So, how are you going to proceed?”

      Pierre’s eyes light up. “Did you use the word ‘proceed’ just now because I’ve been talking about management of processes?”

      Héloïse sighs, mildly exasperated: “OK, what exactly is a process, anyway?”

      Pierre gloats. “My dictionary—my