The Missing Links. Caroline Mondon
friend Milton Zysman, who taught much more than English; my dear colleague Tracy Cheetham, who taught international relationships; and my dear instructor Carol Ptak, who taught me state-of-the-art best practices in supply chain management.
Thank you very much to them and to my numerous test readers. Thanks also to the authors of the appendixes, which are located on the website www.themissinglinks.info and indicated with clues in the margins of this book. It is going to be a continuing pleasure and privilege for me to gather and update this collective intelligence from top international experts, present and future, to help professionals around the world to build capable, ethical, and therefore generous supply chains. Like my heroines Héloïse and Lila and my hero Thierry, I believe that our supply chains can contribute to creating a world to which people want to belong.
Competent supply chain managers know that a vision without a proper professional back-office to make things happen stay within the ego of the visionary. Deep and endless thanks to Alicia Peres, my translator and editor, who has retained a positive outlook and strong dedication to this project from her first involvement many years ago. Her understanding of the best practices of editorial excellence, her flexibility with my crazy traveling schedule, and her humour and bienveillance have added to the pleasure of seeing my detective story offered to an English-language audience.
Caroline Mondon, CFPIM, CIRM, CSCP, CDDP, NLP Master Practitioner, and Certified Independent Board Member, has been a plant manager for the robotics and electronic equipment industries, a supply chain implementer in several medium-sized companies, a Supply Chain & Logistics Director in several countries for the automotive industry, and consultant/owner of CM Enterprises since 2005. She has conducted seminars on S&OP for executives on four continents, has instructed for APICS certifications in CPIM and CSCP since 1994, and is currently a trainer for the Demand Driven Institute.
Ms. Mondon was the president of Fapics, the French Association of Supply Chain Management, between 2011 and 2016, in charge of international and national partnerships. She is the author of a bestselling French business detective novel, Le chaînon manquant, which won a national award for “Quality and Performance Principles” in 2009. The Ministry of the Economy of France awarded her the Chevalière de la Légion d’Honneur in 2014.
HÉLOÏSE AND THE MISSING SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGER
Poor S&OP Processes Generate Discord
MONDAY, LATE AUGUST. 7:00 A.M. The small white Peugeot 205 cuts sharply away from the banks of the Loire to turn left onto the winding road that follows the hillside. On this late summer morning, the Loire stretches serenely between the white rock-face walls, tangled with greenery, that trace its bed. At this level of the embankment, the fold of soft limestone is fully bared, as if to better absorb the air and light that renders it the strength of a building stone. Today, as it had yesterday, and would again tomorrow, the changing light along the banks of the Loire feeds the contrasts in this stone—known here as tuffeau—the raw material from which were constructed the most beautiful buildings in the history of France.
The car slows on one of the first turns and passes some centuries-old “troglodyte” homes—cave-homes common in these cliffs—and picks up speed again as it begins the winding climb between vineyards. The warm humidity rising from the earth has fogged its windows. It would be difficult for anyone observing the car to see the strained look on the driver’s face.
For the first time since the car crash that took her father’s life, Héloïse is confronting this tortuous drive through the vineyards. She could have taken the other, easier route, although it’s longer and much less scenic. But this morning she wants to dispel the demons that lie along this particular road and get her life back on track.
At the end of June, she found herself thrust suddenly into the leadership of the family business, as though she were some kind of puppet on a string. No one imagined that Henri Rami, president of the self-named company he had founded thirty years before, would suddenly leave the business and all its secrets without having named a successor.
Henri Rami himself had owned 60 percent of the limited-liability partnership, which was valued at €51,000. His wife’s eighty-year-old mother held the other 40 percent. Alone and isolated as the head of his company, it never occurred to him to appoint independent members to the board of directors who could bring useful and complementary business skills. Now, all eyes are turned to Héloïse, his only child, to know what should be done.
Once over her initial grief, Héloïse agreed to take over running the company, although she had no clue what to do. She agreed to do so only to help her mother, in shock and deeply unsettled by the sudden loss of her husband, and to protect her grandmother’s interests.
After the funeral, Héloïse met with the employees and their families and became conscious that to avoid any labor disruptions a transition should be organized with whoever would buy the company. The mayor of the village was interested to know how the changes to the company would affect its contribution to the village’s tax revenues and asked to meet with her to learn what she intended to do.
And then ... but, no, these thoughts had nothing to do with the memory of her father. She hadn’t spoken to him about the factory in more than ten years—not since she had finished high school, when he had convinced her to take a preparatory class for the entrance exam at an engineering school.
Héloïse, who had succeeded in all subjects and especially in music, found herself in an advanced math class, surrounded by boys whose sole preoccupation seemed to be to answer the professor’s questions before the next student could. At the time, she had played the game, amused by the envy some had shown toward her marks—which were always among the highest, whatever the subject. Gradually, this spirit of competition left her, and she found that she preferred the pleasure of sharing her curiosity and discoveries with her classmates in order to complete projects as a team.
When her grandmother gifted her tiny old Fiat 500 to Héloïse, in celebration of both her eighteenth birthday and new driver’s license, she hurriedly set about organizing a trip for the Easter vacation. With her cello and accompanied by a pianist friend from high school who also played guitar, she met up with other string musicians. Together they went down to the south of France and enchanted tourists with their music in some of the most beautiful villages in the Luberon.
The trip went very well but, on returning to write her exams, she failed several of them in a row. As a consequence, the option to pass into the next year of preparatory study was suddenly compromised, and with it her chance of being allowed to write the entrance exams for engineering schools. Her father, furious and demanding an explanation, put the blame on his mother-in-law, whom he had never forgiven for having power as a major shareholder in the company. She had never exercised this power, but the very fact that she could have chosen to was too much for him. The argument became heated. Wanting to defend her grandmother, the teenager declared: “I’m old enough to be in charge of my own life now.”
Henri Rami was not used to anyone standing up to him. But facing defiance in his own daughter—for whom he entertained ambitions she didn’t even suspect— made him speechless. Through a reproachful silence, he turned this single incident into an ongoing