Michelin

Michelin has been a Blue Yonder customer since 2003. However in 2014 Michelin decided to deploy Blue Yonder’s agile implementation approach, which includes a sequence of three-week sprints of designing, constructing, testing and validating the solution. This rapid prototyping methodology enabled the team to learn and mature quickly in their use of the solution while achieving results through each phase of the project, ensuring adoption by the business. A key enabler of this approach was the use of Blue Yonder cloud launch to support rapid deployment and performance testing.

Outre le déploiement organisationnel et technologique, Michelin a réalisé une analyse des écarts de ses processus S&OP et de sa position sur la courbe de maturité S&OP. Les équipes ont identifié des lacunes dans les processus et des problèmes de cohérence des données, et ont élaboré un plan d’action pour les combler. Le plan d’action a ensuite été traduit en objectifs mensuels, accompagnés de points mensuels sur l’état d’avancement, afin de renforcer la responsabilité de l’ensemble de l’organisation. L’entreprise a également rejoint le Groupe d’intérêt spécial S&OP de Blue Yonder, ce qui lui a permis d’apprendre des expériences et des meilleures pratiques d’autres clients.

Michelin s’est tournée vers Blue Yonder pour obtenir un soutien dans le projet de transformation S&OP, englobant des changements de processus, d’organisation et de technologie, dans le but d’améliorer ses décisions de planification de la chaîne d’approvisionnement et l’alignement transversal.

Les capacités de planification des ventes et des opérations de Blue Yonder ont permis à Michelin de mieux partager, au sein de l’équipe de direction de l’unité commerciale, un plan commun de demande, de vente et de production, ainsi que de gérer les priorités. Cela permet également à l'entreprise d'équilibrer la demande par rapport à la capacité sur une période de 12 à 18 mois, un processus souvent appelé équilibrage tactique ou planification approximative de la capacité.

Début 2017, Michelin a lancé une étude de réorganisation visant à modifier en profondeur la structure de ses activités. La capacité de collaboration dans la planification des ventes et des opérations de Blue Yonder a joué un rôle essentiel car elle a permis à plusieurs entités (telles que la fabrication, les régions et les lignes de produits) de travailler ensemble pour construire des plans tactiques communs de ventes, de production et de stock, et c'était l'un des principaux leviers qui a permis une transition rapide de l'ancienne organisation vers la nouvelle.

Depuis janvier 2018, les principales activités de Michelin dans le monde sont gérées à l’aide des capacités S&OP de Blue Yonder et d’une feuille de route de déploiement d’outils. La solution soutient un processus et un réseau standardisés pour le partage des meilleures pratiques, permettant aux usines et aux organisations commerciales de disposer d’un nouvel outil de collaboration. Elle permet également de réaliser des simulations locales pour soutenir la gestion de la demande dans les régions, ainsi que la gestion de la capacité dans les usines, le tout en utilisant un seul ensemble de données pour assurer la cohérence.

Moving to an end-to-end supply chain solution, globally 

Having used Blue Yonder and a number of legacy applications for many years, in 2019 Michelin decided to deploy one set of Blue Yonder solutions across the entire organization (across all business lines in all regions), supported by new standardized business processes. Deploying Blue Yonder technology as its backbone solution became mandatory for each business line to ensure uniform decision-making and faster monthly consolidations.

Since migrating from a regionally based supply chain supported by fragmented legacy systems to the new Blue Yonder-based global solution it has seen significant improvements. Focused solely on fulfilment, Michelin estimates it has saved about 2 days of inventory by improving daily planning. 

“Having used the Blue Yonder applications for many years, we have a huge understanding of their capabilities and all the many options for parameterization. So, we know that in the Blue Yonder solutions, there are a lot of options to help us fine-tune the processes to address each market segment.” 

Transportation Management Solution reduces CO2 emissions

Another example of success is around the Blue Yonder transport management system (TMS). Michelin has increased the correct loading of trucks by 2%, resulting in significant logistics cost savings and a reduction in CO2 emissions. 

A new segmented supply chain

Around 2024, Michelin recognized its current global supply chain was functioning well but was based on a ‘one size fits all’ design—with the same service offering everywhere for all customers, across all products. This was deemed inadequate to take the company forward in a world where customer demands are changing so quickly. 

“We decided that we needed to adapt. But instead of trying to take the full supply chain design forward, we decided to split this big problem into several smaller problems. We defined our market into product and customer clusters or segments. We defined for each segment of customers a level of service that we wanted to propose.”

Michelin designed the business model around these customer segments, defining the level of ‘cost-to-serve’ and profitability of the different product segments in each case, together with target KPIs for product availability.

Relationship built on trust

“The 25-year relationship between Michelin and Blue Yonder is very healthy, and we have a lot of fun, which is important. But what is key for me is that the relationship is based on trust.  When we trust each other, we can be demanding with each other. And this is what we do.  Although we can be very challenging as a customer, between us, we are constantly striving for new levels of success.”

“The next stage of our journey is a move to SaaS, and we will be doing lots of work with Blue Yonder to help us identify and define the business value of this important migration. This is the next key step in our relationship.”

“Our relationship is in a good place, and we have much work ahead of us. But the nice thing to remind ourselves is that in every delivery of Michelin tires that we do every day, we can see there is a touch from Blue Yonder at every stage of our customer delivery.”