In France, Johnson & Johnson has 4 production sites, one of which is the plant at Val de Reuil, near Rouen. Specialising in pharmaceutical products and consumer goods including brands such as ROC, Neutrogena, Johnson’s, Clean & Clear and Natusan, the Val de Reuil site currently employs 800 people, taking on several tasks such as production and R&D. Because of an ongoing concern to improve its customer service rate and to reduce its stocks, the "Consumer Europe" division of Johnson & Johnson selected the n.SKEP Production Planning solution from DynaSys in March of 2004.

‘ “Patients first” is our motto, and the one upon which we’ve based our key management decisions for over 60 years, explains Mr. Olivier Leempoels, Director of the Supply Chain Strategy. In this context, the group operates according to a really decentralized management approach butalso depends upon transversal programs like “Process Excellence” that target continuous improvement and the optimization of the company’s main processes. “Lean Manufacturing” is one of these key concepts we pay much attention to: “how to make even more while using even less?” ‘

He adds, ‘The “Lean Manufacturing” principle essentially consists of focusing solely on activities that create value for the final consumer by eliminating all the rest. So we approached our Supply Chain problematic with this philosophy, our goals being total flexibility and improved industrial and distribution organization in order to carry over to the entire logistic chain.’

Last December, the “Consumer Europe” division and the Val de Reuil site decided to employ a planning tool that is able to communicate with the different ERP factions of the European Supply Chain. ‘Our approach was the following: first of all we needed to define how we wanted to monitor our Supply Chain and develop the “Lean Planning System” concept, comments Olivier Leempoels. The idea is to function with “pull” logic by applying the “continuous replenishment” and “rhythm wheels” concepts. In other words, we need to produce only the customer’s need: “right product, right place, right time, right cost”, and draw production according to sales instead of sales forecasts!’

Since the US divisions was equipped with a tool not employable in Europe, the “Consumer Europe” division decided to consult the main players in Supply Chain Management in December of 2003. An initial market round enabled to establish a first list of approximately 10 editors, among whom 4 were pre-selected to respond to a request for proposals outlining the desired process, so that the editors might more accurately propose a solution adapted to the specific problematic.

At the end of March 2004, DynaSys was finally retained for its n.SKEP Production Planning solution, which would permit a synchronized production and supply planning for all of the plants. ‘DynaSys and their challenger were tied in terms of demonstrations. However, besides the fact that their tool had the capacity to meet our needs, we selected DynaSys because of its technological platform corresponding better to the computing standards of the Group,’ continues Olivier Leempoels.

Currently in modelling phase at the Val de Reuil site, the “Consumer Europe” division foresees that the system will be launched next July, and the deployment for the rest of the European market will take place between now and the end of December. Faced with such a short time, Johnson & Johnson and DynaSys assembled an integrated task-force, grouping users and experts in “Lean Manufacturing", planning, distribution and IT systems.

‘Our mission was clearly defined, concludes Ariel Weil, General Manager Assistant of DynaSys: enable Johnson & Johnson to be operational in less than three months and guarantee our customer a significant decrease in response time, in order to gain reactivity concerning needs variation. Thanks to our trade approach and our “Lean Manufacturing” expertise, as well as the flexibility of our solution, we can today respond to all of our customers’ Supply Chain problematics in very short timeframes.’