The Supply Chain department manages the entire supply chain of all our production sites and operates as a core support function for our 15 subsidiaries. The role of Supply Chain is to serve operations while protecting the interests of the company by optimising lead times, quality and costs as per company rules and in compliance with the international legislation. Our teams are attuned to markets. As experts in exceptional routings and emergencies, they work on a just-in-time basis while paying attention to operating needs so that all together, we make sure that every project we undertake is successful.
Securely supplying production sites
Our mission consists in providing our sites and bases with all their functional and vital needs. We supply them in raw materials (fuel, oils and chemicals) in spare parts and machines and even in people and human time for site works. We supply accommodation facilities and catering services as well. *
Moreover, our role is also to provide equipment for all headquarters or subsidiaries projects (i.e. construction, drilling, marine and security).
An expert team managing just-in-time services
Supply Chain activity begins in subsidiaries – this is where everything happens. The SCM manager leads between 20 to 100 people depending on the subsidiary size, including warehouse managers, buyers, transit teams, logistic staff, even sometimes general services managers or contracted engineers. Our teams listen to the needs of operations whilst remaining vigilant in terms of planning and legislative compliance.
The Supply Chain team at headquarters is made of ten collaborators who have four main tasks. First, to support Paris teams’ project activities and provide them with adequate support in terms of purchase, shipping or transit.
Then as centralising experts we appropriately share our information; for example we define processes, interventions on complex files and even suppliers (research, relationship, evaluation). Third we are in charge of stock management at group level, a challenge with colossal stakes. Finally the team is also responsible for maintaining the SAP tool and its development and interface with multiple third party systems. This is the Supply Chain cornerstone from the moment a need is formulated until payment has been completed.
A responsible Supply Chain with a focus on production
Our role is to address all the production demands while leveraging time and costs as part of a responsible policy.
In terms of risks we have to face all the dangers associated with logistics. We work very closely with HSE to ensure the optimum safety of people and facilities, for example during handling operations.
Our job involves just-in-time flows and we very much depend on our freight forwarders. Thereby we must diligently plan supply and anticipate any risks of delays for deliveries. We are increasingly working with monitoring tools, however, given the huge distances involved and the countries where we operate, the whole scenario is complex.
Finally we face an ethical issue that concretely applies to our purchasing practices. We pay a lot of attention to prevent corruption and to guarantee business ethics, so we only choose partners able to comply with transparency rules.
Technological challenges with a focus on traceability and user-comfort
We have three major challenges for tomorrow. Firstly we are concerned about tracking and tracing our orders. Using technological advances we want as much as possible to deploy an enhanced and integrated IT system able to take account of all the flows and order information across the company.
Similarly we implement all possible means to manage our stocks at a global level so we can optimise them. Ultimately we aim to pool all subsidiaries equipment together and regularly transfer stocks.
We are increasingly favouring these solutions, which require working upstream with operations very early on so as to anticipate schedules and manage equipment as responsibly as possible without hampering our production.