Mathieu Chacun, Annecy Site Director for ADTP, joined the company in late 2020 after the lockdown. When he arrived, he saw that the company needed to change its culture. "To improve customer satisfaction, they needed to be at the heart of our concerns," he said. After reorganising the site, he started to look for a training programme that could help him reach this objective and fit the diversity of the backgrounds that he wanted to promote in his team. After a few chance meetings, he joined forces with the Pro Training Department at Grenoble INP - UGA. "Working with an organisation that could offer a bespoke training programme seemed perfect to me. I wasn't disappointed; we received custom support." Laurent Rannaz, a former manufacturing professional who now works in education and is a professor at Grenoble INP - Industrial Engineering, UGA, accompanied them in this change of culture. "I started by visiting the ADTP site in Annecy to speak with employees and get a precise idea of the situation," said Laurent Rannaz. "Clearly, lean manufacturing, which consists of providing precisely the resources needed at the right place at the right time to satisfy the customer and keep costs under control, seemed to be the best solution to most of the problems raised."
A custom training plan was quickly drawn up to train a dozen executives, including the production, quality, security, HR and logistics directors, over 12 days that took place between June 2021 and March 2022. "The goal was to have them understand and adopt the lean manufacturing culture," said Laurent Rannaz. "Because once you have this culture, the tools determine the structure." Each day was split into a theoretical part and a practice part, using educational tools such as immersive games to immediately put into practice the experiences and theoretical knowledge of lean manufacturing. "In this case, the game was to assemble a lorry using Meccano parts industrially," said Laurent Rannaz. "As they progressed in their training, the trainees were able to take advantage of what they had learned and were more efficient and effective." Even though the trainees started at a variety of different levels, all of them were satisfied with the training, awarding it a score of 8.5/10 in the final evaluation. "But above all, they came out of the course with a concrete action plan on a logistics problem, a flow problem, that was causing issues for us," said Mathieu Chacun happily. "By using a classic tool of lean manufacturing, mapping added value, they successfully reduced waiting time between tasks and significantly improved customer service rates." Following this success, the course will soon be rolled out to another plant in Annemasse.
Meanwhile, the partnership between ADTP and Grenoble INP is expected to grow. "We are considering taking on Grenoble INP - Industrial Engineering students at the end of their studies in the fields of lean manufacturing and logistics. We will also be setting up another training course with the Pro Training department with the same vision in mind, but more focused on managing resources and the flow of information. It could begin at the end of the year." Watch this space!
*ADTP is a French non-profit association whose mission is to support and encourage the employment of disabled people. It has several sites where industrial assembly is outsourced. The Annecy site led by Mathieu Chacun employs 250 people.
