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Case studies

Transport

Description

Scope

The transport sector covers all companies that transport goods and persons by all modes: road, rail, air and sea.

Background

The transport sector is exposed to factors such as the economic climate, variations in the price of oil, transport safety, sustainable development and the reduction of gas emissions.

Moreover, the industry is experiencing some significant changes. The introduction of free competition on the railways in Europe and the emergence of low cost airlines and Middle Eastern operators have heralded a new era in the transportation of goods and people.

The players in the sector continue to restructure in order to adapt themselves to the new situation. Since the pressure on both prices and quality of service stepped up sharply, operators have started making breakaway changes in an effort to improve their performance.

The challenges

This need to make radical changes in order to meet targets in terms of costs and service and remain competitive has impacted a broad range of operational areas, where there are numerous levers that can be used to bring about improvements:

  • the optimization of transport plans, in particular by rail and/or road in order to boost load factors and improve the offer for rail passengers and freight that travels by rail and road,
  • more flexible services to stand out from the competition (by way of example,  what is the value proposition for air freight?),
  • better communication between operators and their customers that make use of new technologies:
    • information for rail and air passengers,
    • tracking and tracing of freight,
  • ecosystem management and partnerships:
    • with customers, in an effort to adapt to new needs by globally optimizing the logisitics chain,
    • with other transport operators, in order to propose a multi-modal offer,
  • improvement of the efficiency of all the processes that contribute to the delivery of the service,
  • optimization of the operational uptime of transport resources (railway trucks, aircraft engines and associated equipment, lorries, etc.) and, where appropriate, the infrastructure (e.g. the railway lines) in order to cut costs (new equipment, maintenance) and improve the availability of the equipment using a number of levers:
    • strategic: maintenance policy, life cycle management, make or buy,
    • tactical: planning of operations and flows,
    • operational: efficiency of the maintenance, repair and refurbishment processes.

How can Argon Consulting help you?

We assist our customers in this sector (passenger transport, freight operators, etc.) to rise to these new challenges, from the assessment of the issues they face to the application of a range of levers to their operational performance:

  • definition of new transport service offers and associated services (passenger information, track & trace): assessment of economic impacts (market share, additional costs) and the impact on information systems and support with the implementation,
  • optimization of road and rail transport plans: Argon Consulting has a range of in-house transport optimization tools built on our comprehensive feedback from this type of project,
  • adoption of a Lean approach to all the processes that support or directly contribute to the production of the service (Lean Service),
  • improvement of the maintenance of fleets and transport infrastructures in operational order, and in particular:
    • optimization of the maintenance policy, modeling of life cycle costs (LCC), make or buy policy,
    • planning of operations (maintenance, repairs, refurbishment).
  • improved performance of the parts purchasing policy, and in particular:
    • optimization of the spare parts supply chain (repairable parts, including the management of consumables and new parts, etc.),
    • more efficient operations by adopting a Lean approach (maintenance, repairs, refurbishment): productivity or reduction of cycles.

Argon’s customers include the RATP, SNCF, RFF, Europe Airpost, La Poste, Heppner, GEFCO, Chronopost, Easydis, Samada, Kuehne & Nagel, CEVA Logistics, ID Logistics, Norbert Dentressangle, etc.

Team

Yvan Salamon – President

The founder and President of Argon Group, Yvan has managed and been directly involved in many assignments to improve operations (costs, cash flow), as well as industrial and logistics strategy assignments in the retail and manufacturing sectors. He has worked on many missions in the goods transportation sector (Samada, Easydis, Kuehne & Nagel, Cepl, etc.). Before creating Argon Group, Yvan Salamon was a member of the European Board of Hays Logistics Group (Kuehne & Nagel), where he was in charge of production methods and organization. Prior to that, Yvan Salamon spent four years as the Production Plants Manager with CGC, and five years with the strategy consultancy bureau, Mars & Co. Yvan is a graduate of the Ponts & Chaussées engineering school.

Fabrice Bonneau –  Managing Director

Before becoming Managing Director of Argon Consulting, Fabrice was in charge of the Manufacturing Distribution Retail sector at Capgemini Consulting, and a member of the management committee. Before that, he was one of the founders of PEA Consulting.  Fabrice has worked on numerous performance improvement (cost cutting, stock reductions, improvement of service) and supply chain change projects. He has managed numerous assignments for SNCF (supply chain, industrial performance, maintenance, transport plans, etc.) Air France Industrie and logistics operators, such as Gefco and Geodis (logistics performance, information system master plan). Fabrice is a graduate of the Ponts & Chaussées engineering school and a qualified mathematician. He is also President of the Industrial Engineering department of the Ponts & Chaussées engineering school.

Marc Peigné – Associate Director

Marc Peigné is an Associate Director. He is one of France’s leading specialists in logistics. Marc has worked on many logistics master plan, operational re-engineering, outsourcing and change management projects. Before joining Argon Consulting, he worked for Hays Logistics (Kuhne & Nagel), where he was in charge of planning and logistics engineering in France, before becoming a Divisional Director. Prior to that, Marc was in charge of procurement at Alcatel.

Nicolas Gelle – Associate Director

Nicolas Gellé has 16 years of experience in consulting, in particular in the fields of service strategy, manufacturing or logistics master plans, the reconfiguration of supply chain processes and organizational changes, and in restructuring projects, performance, outsourcing and activity transfer plans and the design of warehouses and industrial sites. In particular, he has worked on mail and parcel planning problems for the French post office and on cost optimization projects. Before joining Argon Consulting, Nicolas was in charge of the manufacturing entity at Valtech Axelboss, of which he was one of the founders. He was also Supply Chain Director at Moulinex. Nicolas started his career with Ouroumoff and CSC Peat Marwick.  Nicolas is a graduate of Centrale Lille.

Eric T. – Director

Eric T. joined Argon Consulting after 10 years with BearingPoint, where he worked on logistics strategy projects, and on logistics and manufacturing performance. Before that, he worked for Productive Edge Associates. He has taken part in numerous transport optimization projects. Eric is a graduate of Polytechnique and of Ponts et Chaussées.

Carmela V. –  Senior Manager

Carmela V. is a Senior Manager specialized in logistics. Carmela has worked on many logistics performance projects (warehouses, transport, networks, systems). Before joining Argon Consulting, Carmela worked for Hays Logistics (Kuehne & Nagel), where she occupied a number of positions, ranging from logistics consultant to IT project manager and operations.

Emmanuel S. - Manager

Emmanuel S. is a Manager specialized in Distribution and Logistics. He has worked on Supply Chain organization and process optimization (network design, milk run optimization) and on IT implementation for the Supply Chain (blue print, validation of solutions, change management), for Retailers (Department Store Le Printemps, Nespresso) and for Industrial Distributors (Yves Rocher, PSA, Gefco, EDF). Emmanuel is a graduate of Centrale Lyon in industrial engineering, production management and logistics.

Eric P. - Manager

Eric P. has worked on many performance improvement assignments (logistics and supply chain) as well as transformation assignments. Eric led numerous transportation assignments : management of transportation calls for tender, transportation benchmark, delivery optimization… He worked in particular for Casino, major Sun and Buffalo Grill. Eric is a graduate of Centrale Paris and of Technical University of Munich (TUM) in production management.