Alstom Transport drives new era in supply chain operations

Alstom's supply chain director Annie Saillard explains that, despite standardisation efforts around supply chain processes, the company had been struggling with a lack of visibility and synchronisation of its inter-site production flows. "As the quality of expressed need requirements was poor, sites tended to stabilise their production for long periods of time," she says. "On the other hand, each of our internal customer plants was adding extra days to their lead times, due to low confidence in supplier delivery performance." She indicates that to reduce time to market and improve internal flexibility, planning and execution needed to be better synchronised. Which is where the on demand supply chain management solution, from Wesupply, comes in – providing a single, unbiased view across the company's entire internal supply chain. And she adds that it now pervades the entire build and supply planning process, and covers execution throughout the organisation – with Alstom Transport now seamlessly exchanging orders and commitments between internal plants, in lock step with its SAP ERP system. "The internal collaboration across our sites facilitates an improved trusting relationship, enabling improved control of scheduling and fulfilment, while providing a real-time global view of our business from any location," says Saillard.