The Missing Links. Caroline Mondon
arrived at the end of spring. It was around this time that Thierry’s colleagues had grown curious about what exactly his job was. Five months after its creation, it seemed to them to consist of both everything and nothing at all.
Yasmina has barely knocked on the door when it swings open to reveal the worried expression on Héloïse’s face.
“Yes? Is he here?”
“Um ... It’s Mr. Chaillou, ma’am. He wants to know if the meeting is going to start.”
Roger Chaillou, the supervisor of the wood shop, shambles in behind Yasmina, looking worried. Henri Rami named him head of quality control soon after he congratulated Roger on being, unlike his counterpart in the metal shop, punctual for meetings. Since that time, other people’s lateness causes Roger great anxiety, as though it were his responsibility.
“Is the meeting going to start?” Héloïse wonders, petrified. She reacts the way she does before a concert, when the nervousness of others, combined with her own, compels her to throw herself into the music the way she would throw herself into a cold lake: with an empty mind, she just begins.
“Yes. Tell everyone that we’re ready to start. Thierry will join us when he gets here.”
For this kind of meeting, “everyone” usually meant Hubert Lancien, in charge of sales; Georgette Olivier, head of accounting; Jean-Marc Gridy, supervisor of the metal shop; Roger Chaillou, supervisor of the wood shop and head of quality control; Thierry Ambi, supply chain manager; and Henri Rami, president.
Héloïse shakes Jean-Marc’s hand quickly when he arrives with his usual grumpy air. Then she follows Hubert and Georgette, who have emerged simultaneously from their offices. They climb the spiral staircase up to the meeting room, located on the top floor.
The room has a vaulted ceiling and a skylight over the tables, which have been arranged in the shape of a U. At the top of the U is a wall covered by a large whiteboard. The attendees sit mechanically facing it. Héloïse hesitates. Hubert signals her to sit beside him, at the bottom of the U. The silence is heavy. Everyone looks at their feet.
Héloïse starts to speak. “I came in this morning to participate in your monthly meeting and to tell you all how things are going to be from now on. But I’d rather wait for Thierry before getting started. In the meantime, I suggest you carry on with your meeting as you usually do. Yes—just pretend I’m not here at all.”
Looks are exchanged, and after some back and forth, everyone’s glance settles on Hubert, who clears his throat before speaking. “It was Thierry who started to organize this meeting soon after his arrival. He called it the ‘S&OP’ meeting—the sales and operations planning meeting. My understanding is that, when Henri was in charge of chairing them, Thierry was the one who was supposed to prepare things with each of us between meetings. I gave Thierry my updated sales forecast by product line, as usual, but I don’t know what he did with it, as we were supposed to hold this meeting several times in the spring but often had to postpone due to emergencies. We finally had one at the beginning of June, at which Henri mainly asked questions about the backlog. Therefore, we did not have time to deal with the important issues. In my opinion, it would be better to wait for Thierry to get here to show us what he’s prepared.”
Georgette takes on her usual air of a perfectly behaved schoolgirl and pipes up, “I kept the note that Thierry handed out about this process. He considered it to be critical in building the future of our company and allowing a proper implementation of the ERP. We had planned to work together to prepare some scenarios for next year, but we haven’t done it yet.”
She takes a sheet of paper from her binder and passes it to Héloïse, who reviews it aloud, for fear the deafening silence would return.
“I see several definitions with highlighted words,” she murmurs hesitantly. “‘It is a set of decision-making processes that balance demand and supply’ ... ‘it brings together all the plans for the business: sales, marketing, development, manufacturing, sourcing, and financial’ ... ‘it is an integrated business-planning process to create one company agenda.’ And there is another one here,” she says, clearing her throat, “. ‘a bi-directional integration point in a Demand Driven Adaptive System between the strategic and tactical relevant ranges of decision making.’” Héloïse pauses and sighs.
“I also see a diagram with handwritten words added: ‘risk management,’ ‘PDC ... A,’ I think ...” She hesitates. “... ‘vision’—followed by three question marks ... ‘strategy into action’ ...”
Héloïse looks around anxiously, trying to catch someone’s glance. It is Jean-Marc who catches hers and jumps at the chance to speak. He could never stay quiet for more than three minutes at a meeting.
“I need the production plan or the schedule, whatever you call it, for this month, because I have two guys who are still on holiday, and I need to know whether or not to replace them. We can’t wait forever to decide.”
Georgette raises her chin and launches into her high-priestess-of-the-company-accounts act. “If you are going to discuss things at this level of detail then we also need to know whether we’ll continue to make tables and chairs for the Collectivité product line, because, if we keep buying raw materials to make inventory that doesn’t sell, I won’t have enough money to pay employee salaries ...”
Roger, his muscles bulging underneath his white T-shirt, makes an effort to speak, his voice finally booming like a cannon. “All the same, I don’t want to leave my crew idle. It looks like we’ve lost the order for those armchairs from Saint-Nazaire, and I don’t know what else to give them to do!”
Feeling targeted, Hubert speaks up. “Yes, we’ve definitely lost the Saint-Nazaire order. The news came last week, which is surprising, since it was during everyone’s vacation. It must be that young assistant of Durois in purchasing, taking advantage of his boss’s absence to get rid of us. Durois was on vacation, and this assistant was no doubt overzealous and wanted to make his performance metrics look good. But I don’t want to make excuses to imply that it’s the customer’s fault. I’m too old for that. For months I haven’t known what to do to keep up our image as a professional company in the eyes of this long-standing customer. It must be said: this is the third time we’ve sent the wrong accessories for the backs of the armchairs in the officer’s bar, and their technicians discovered they didn’t fit snugly when they assembled them. This time even Durois would have had a hard time forgiving us!”
Hubert puts his hand to his forehead and, trying to hide his exasperation, continues. “We never know when their technicians are actually going to install the armchairs, because they keep our deliveries in stock for a long time before they open them on-site. This time, they opened them all at once and realized more than one-third of the accessories were wrong. May I remind you that we’re talking about a luxury item here—”
“But it’s not my fault!” Roger has interrupted him, panic-stricken. “I told Thierry that Mr. Rami hadn’t approved the bill-of-materials update. So Léon ordered the old accessories as usual, the ones that are now creating problems!”
Making the most of the crescendo of confusion, Jean-Marc presses his own point: “So what exactly should we do in the metal shop? We got the drawing for the bases of the countertops for the Dapare shops. We have to make thirty of them in two months, so we need to start right away. The Mercier boy is now available as a temp. I intend to hire him, to give him a try ...”
Héloïse tries to follow these exchanges, dumbfounded. It’s like she is listening to an amateur orchestra trying to tune their instruments without the will to play from the same score. She immerses herself in Thierry’s memo, shutting out all the voices. She can’t see any connection between what she is reading and what she has just heard. She is more anxious than ever for this day to end.
1 Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP, refers to integrated business-management software.
2