“Speak regularly from the heart and the gut, then you automatically form a bond over time”
duce milk, cheese products, whey for baby food and so on. We could invite suppliers such as packaging manufacturers to have a base there too. I’ve suggested this idea internally and most of the feedback was positive. There are no concrete plans so far, but I’ve opened the door far enough that we now consider not only existing locations but also new ones when discussing investment plans – not because I want to, but because it’s more practical. And the idea isn’t to close existing factories, but to build additional ones.”
ing to see the operators’ pride in what they have achieved. We’ve also given them the lead in improvement projects, such as sched- uling the sampling in tanks for various departments. The opera- tors evaluate the situation themselves and then think up the most logical route. The maintenance used to be done by a separate department, but the initial responsibility now lies with the opera- tors because they know the machines. When they’ve completed their course in autonomous maintenance you see them walking around the factory with a big grin on their faces, carrying their toolbox and making sure everything works again. Plus the main- tenance department can now focus on strategic improvements.”
You ’ve been working on tracking and tracing over the past year.
Why? “That’s important in pharma and baby food. In the wake of all the scandals, customers in China and Hong Kong want to be sure about the quality of baby food. At FrieslandCampina we have the whole chain under control, from farm to fork. A shopper can scan the QR code on the packaging and see all the supply chain information. We also use the codes ourselves for track and trace purposes. In the case of an incident, we can withdraw specific batches from sale and provide certainty for retailers and govern- ments alike. The pharmaceutical world demands that certainty too. If it works in China and Hong Kong – our biggest baby food market in Asia – we’ll implement it worldwide.”
If you could start from scratch, how would you design the proces- ses?
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“Our production facilities have often grown from village dairy companies. They have close ties with their local community, and that’s a good fit with us as a cooperative, but they are often hemmed in by urbanization and are a source of nuisance in terms of traffic and noise. So it’s my dream to have a Dairy Park where we bring the supply chain together. Instead of spending money on maintenance, we should perhaps dare to build something new in a central location with good HGV access where we can pro-
Do you regard it as a Supply Chain task to take such a compa- ny-wide view? “Firstly, I think we’re still too focused on our own disciplines. Keep looking at the supply chain as a whole! We’ve got some really complex systems and tools for analysing market intelli- gence, but it all starts with the customer. If you can be a sparring partner alongside Sales, you can stay ahead of the market trends. We’re focused on large volumes of uniform products, but the future is much more about the small scale – supplying to custom- ers quickly, in the right formats and personalized – so our pro- duction must be very agile. My team members are now talking to their counterparts within our clients’ companies, which is a new approach, and whenever I’m in Asia I talk to consumers while out shopping. You can get lots of information that way. The second point is transparency; consumers want to know where our products come from. And thirdly, it’s people that will make the difference. They have to keep pace with the rapidly changing and increasingly complex high-end technologies. It’s our duty to guide them on this journey, and I’m happy to invest in that. Ultimately we’re heading towards an extensively automated and digitalized supply chain, with lower costs and fewer people. I pre- dict a huge wave of technological innovation which will enable us to spend more time on planning ahead rather than fire-fighting, because that currently takes up far too much of Supply Chain’s time. If you know when a component is likely to break down or completely unraveled the raw material treatments, you can start making digital forecasts and taking preventative action.”
The future is in the hands of…? “Managers with a background in technology or IT, who are not only good at systems thinking and looking ahead, but also at managing people. I believe in multidisciplinary teams and cross- disciplinary mutations. Take people out of their comfort zone by letting them shadow colleagues in a different discipline, such as by putting a supply chain person with someone from marketing. That stimulates diversity in knowledge, skills and experience lead- ing to better results and more rewarding work. I’ve worked here for longer than anywhere else and it’s never been boring – not least thanks to the connection with the dairy farmers, by the way, for whom I have tremendous respect. I don’t mind going the extra mile for them because they work 365 days a year. And there’s still so much we can do! I won’t be done here until someone tells me that I’ve lost my magic touch.”
SUPPLY CHAIN MOVEMENT, No.31, Q4 2018
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