Christian Voyé

CPIM, CSCP, SCOR-P, CDDP, DDLP, Master Factory Physicist, DDSCFP, Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Lean Practitioner, PSM I, PSPO I

Please tell us in which company and position you started your APICS certification(s)? What was your motivation to complete the certification(s)?
"In 2006, Dupont Performance Coatings implemented a major supply chain transformation program. As part of my role as Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, I led the redesign project of the MPS and Inventory Management process. In this context, together with other colleagues involved in this transformation, I obtained my first APICS certification (CPIM - Certified in Production to Inventory Management). The framework APICS provided and the common language helped our organization take our supply chain processes to a new level. Later on, as the European Supply Chain Leadership Team, we also took the CSCP (Certified Supply Chain Professional) courses and certification to work with the same basis but at the strategic level. In 2012, I also obtained the SCOR-P certification. At the time, DuPont had pursued the strategy of standardizing its processes more strongly and, based on the modular SCOR standard, using them as part of a new implementation of SAP.
In a global team of different business units, we conducted accompanying analyzes of our supply chain processes across all levels of the SCOR method. I edited the workstream MRP. Together with pilot users, we then used a gap analysis to examine how many of our processes can be mapped with the standard. Although everyone involved was convinced that we needed many exceptions because of our specific processes in the chemical process industry, there were less than a handful of processes left at the end of the analysis where we needed a DuPont specific fit."

How did your certification(s) help you to achieve the position you are currently in?
"Certification was essential to my role as a Lean Six Sigma Master Blackbelt supply chain, as my black belt management responsibilities involved running the supply chain projects and guiding the leadership.
Part of my job is also to engage myself with current and forward-looking topics. Therefore, training as a Demand Driven Planner and Demand Driven Leader was an organic evolution completed by the more scientific approach of Factory Physics. In addition, the network, which I could build up through the PMI training, helps me. Depending on the situation in the respective supply chain, this broad field of supply chain concepts helps me, with colleagues and customers, to select suitable concepts and adapt them to local conditions."

Please give us a concrete example, where you have applied the APICS knowledge in your career.
"When redesigning an E2E lean value stream process for our water-based paint production, the goal was also to systematically reorganize the planning as Pull Planning taking into account the overall process. A classic Kanban system was eliminated due to the high product diversity and the high variance of both the requirements and the processes. For the development of the new planning concept, the understanding of the relationships between variance, utilization and lead time discussed in Factory Physics and the use of buffers as decoupling points and their management from the Demand Driven Framework have helped a lot to break new ground. Another example is the adaptive approach to inventory management where the ideas from the Demand Driven Leader Curriculum helped us design a feedback-based system that, unlike the predictive methods we used in the past, dynamically responds to changes in the supply chain."


Back