Directeur des Achats | Connecté au business | Stratégique | Proche des équipe

• Create & develop a Mattress e-commerce business
• Achieved : development of 3 products lines, 4,9/5 consumer satisfaction, breakeven in 2 years, 1 world wide class innovation

• Scope: 700M€/y spend, 80 Yogurt & Baby Food plants, 2.000 suppliers, 15 reports
• Category: Fruits, Vegetables, Meat, Fish
• Situation: I was appointed Food Category Purchasing Director for Danone Dairy & Baby Nutrition (15b€ turnover) in a context where productivity had been at high level for more than 5 years in a row, Quality complains had raised up and Marketing teams were starting to request sustainable agriculture evidences to be claimed.
• Task: Danone's CPO chose me to keep pace with global productivity, while improving Quality KPIs and setting Danone on the path to sustainable food.
• Activity: I presented a strategy dealing with the 3 subjects head-on. Productivity -> We launched regional tenders (Europe, Russia, Africa, North America, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Japan) leveraging volume by reducing the number of suppliers and giving 60% of the volume to the winning supplier. At the same time, we succeeded in reducing the cost of material references that changed hands by creating cross-functional reformulating teams in each Region.
• Quality → By associating Danone and Suppliers quality-R&D-industrial-purchasing experts, we have set up teams responsible for identifying problems, deciding on action plans and monitoring the Food Safety and Quality KPIs on a monthly basis with the 5 first suppliers (2/3 of expenses)
• Sustainability → I chose to team up with Rain Forest Alliance, one of the most recognized NGOs working at the intersection of business and agriculture. We have defined what sustainability will mean for Danone Food's supply chain and listed best practices regarding chemical use, water use, level of safety, salary and health insurance agricultural workers and the use of plastic at farm level (20,000 farms were affected).
• Results: Over a period of 6 years, we succeeded delivering a stable high level productivity (7%/year) while keeping consumer satisfaction, decreasing by 50% the quality complains and reaching 20% of sustainable farms (4.000).

• Scope: 500M€/y spend, 75 Yogurt plants, 500 suppliers, 7 direct reports, 10 indirect reports Category: CAPEX (Automation, Processing, Packing machines, Buildings, WWTP, HVAC, Boilers, Refrigeration, Compressed air)
• Situation: The Activia brands and Greek yogurts were accelerating their sales. At the same time, Danone's Board of Directors initiated a cash generation plan to support the share price. Coming from an industrial background, I was appointed Purchasing Director for the Capex category in a demanding context.
• Task: Danone's CPO asked me to rethink the Capex category strategy in order to reduce project costs, secure contractual time to market and reduce operational costs of the installed equipements in Danone yogurt plants.
• Activity: I put in place a two axis plan to improve the investment project cost an timing. First, the local engineering managers have been involved in order to adapt the sourcing strategy by Region. This drastically reduced the time for the early stages of projects, as the competitive bidding process was clear and aligned. Second, to maximize supplier performance, we asked Global ones to establish more experienced engineering teams in their regional offices, and we developed and trained Regional suppliers to better understand Danone engineering standards. Real and tough competitions have then taken place in the calls for tenders between global and regional suppliers. Regarding operational costs, I focused on two priorities: redesigning packing machines from the top 5 suppliers in order to reduce downtime, and creating a monitoring tool with Schneider Electric that allowed Danone operators to apply the Kaisen methodology on energy consumption during yogurt production.
• Results: The unitary cost of Capex fell by 20%, while 80% of investment projects were delivered on time. In terms of operational costs, packing machine downtime was reduced by 5% and energy consumption decreased by 15% in the first 5 yogurt factories that implemented the monitoring tool

• Scope: 2.500M€/y spend, 75 Yogurt plants, 30 indirect reports
• Categories: Materials (Milk Ingredients, Functional Ingredients, Fruits, Packaging)
• Situation: I was the internal Productivity Consultant for Danone Dairy. Covering 25 business units around the world. No team reporting directly to me. But 30 purchasing directors (25 local business units and 5 categories) with whom to work in a transversal way.
• Task: The COO of Danone Dairy asked me to take over this position that had been abandoned for more than 2 years. Aiming at increasing the level of material productivity of the Milk Division by 2 points, from 4 to 6%, without harming consumer satisfaction.
• Activity: I put in place a 4 step strategy. 1) Monitoring and sharing the status and dynamic of each business unit, each caterogy and each project type on a monthly basis; 2) Identifying Big Fish projects with suppliers (top down) and business units (bottom up), and advertising first success; 3) Having the cross functional local teams using the Value Creation methodology at brand level in order to facilitate cost cutting when the value was not perceived by the consumer; and 4) Rolling out quick wins across business units promoting a catalog of small size productivity projects. Proximity with local teams' concerns, providing them the tools (value analysis consultants) and support (experts from global suppliers), have been key success factors.
• Results: The Dairy division has delivered over 6% material productivity over the 4 years of my mission. I left a 300M€ validated productivity pipeline when I took over my next position.

Bulgaria & Romania

• Scope: 200M€/y turnover, 2 Yogurt plants, 10 direct reports, 200 employees
• Brands: Activia, Cremoso, DAF, Danone, Danup, Na Baba, Petit Gervais
• Situation: I managed the two yogurt factories of the Danone Dairy Balkan cluster, in Sofia and Bucharest. When I arrived, the cluster suffered from high manufacturing costs and poor quality results, compared to the Danone standard.
• Task: The Regional General Manager recruited me to save the old Bulgarian factory from closing and to upgrade the brand new Romanian factory's performance to the Danone standards.
• Activity: After a 2 month in-depth diagnosis, I realized that A) half of the factory management teams did not have the ability or the will to perform in their role, B) all managers were disconnected of what was actually happening on the shop floor, and C) factories and supply chain teams were playing against each other. The plan to follow was then simple: A) I replaced half of the managers, promoting mainly team leaders with potential, B) I introduced the use of performance manufacturing tools (Kaisen, Andon, KPI ) which allowed the teams to decide on continuous improvement actions based on daily production data, and C) With the approval of the Supply Chain Director, I set up a cross-functional team and clear procedures that allowed to have LEAN operations: minimize the inventory of supplies and finished products, improve the production capacity of the factories and decrease the losses of milk and material.
• Results: The two plant reached the Danone quality standards and they ranked in the top 5 low manufacturing cost over the 75 plants of the Dairy Divison (-25 cost/ton, +10% service level). To be noticed: 2 of the managers I developped were promoted at Director position in the Manufacturing headquarter Danone Dairy team.

• Manage projects: Small Business financing, then Food technology R&D
• Achieved: 20 micro-credit business, 5 technologies from lab to industrial scale