Jeanne-Ruth Terrisse — Interview Passion Supply Chain

Jeanne-Ruth Ter­risse, Sup­ply Chain Meth­ods Man­ag­er at CHOMARAT TEXTILES INDUSTRIES has joined ALOER Con­sul­tants, the glob­al sup­ply chain expert firm. Her mis­sions are to orga­nize and devel­op the third-par­ty appli­ca­tion main­te­nance of the ERP Infor Blend­ing.

Her exper­tise in con­cepts, her expe­ri­ence in Sup­ply Chain meth­ods and con­tin­u­ous improve­ment as well as his knowl­edge of pro­duc­tion process­es enrich the team of consultants.

Pas­sion­ate about ori­en­teer­ing, ren­o­va­tion of old causse­nard hous­es and a for­mi­da­ble hand­ball play­er, Jeanne-Ruth lends her­self today to the Pas­sion Sup­ply Chain interview. 

Interview Passion Supply Chain

Jeanne-Ruth, we would like to know a lit­tle more about you and your job… 

What job did you dream of when you were a child?

When I was a child, my dream was to work in a med­ical profession.

Tell us about your studies and your atypical school career

My par­ents’ busi­ness led us to move sev­er­al times. Orig­i­nal­ly from Nor­mandy, I have lived in the Alli­er, Can­tal, Ardèche, and Isère. These moves have cer­tain­ly opened my mind and giv­en me a taste for trav­el. So, before I fin­ished high school, I decid­ed to go to Eng­land as an au pair and to take my Bac­calau­re­ate by cor­re­spon­dence. It was a great expe­ri­ence. Back in France, I decid­ed to con­tin­ue my stud­ies in inter­na­tion­al trade.

What was the trigger or experience that led you to become interested in Supply Chain?

At the end of my school­ing, I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to join CHOMARAT TEXTILES INDUSTRIES, a com­pa­ny in the tex­tile indus­try as an export sales assis­tant. This fam­i­ly busi­ness gave me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to grow with­in the com­pa­ny. Thus, I was able to work in the dif­fer­ent depart­ments of the com­pa­ny: sales, plan­ning and sched­ul­ing, and pro­cure­ment dur­ing the first years.

After­wards, I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the devel­op­ment of the infor­ma­tion sys­tem under AS400, and final­ly, I was in charge of the Sup­ply Chain methods.

The choice to work in the Sup­ply Chain was very quick­ly obvi­ous to me. First of all, it uses prac­ti­cal­ly all the data in the infor­ma­tion sys­tem: mas­ter data, man­age­ment para­me­ters, trans­ac­tions, sales fore­casts, sched­ules, sim­u­la­tions, opti­miza­tions, flow mon­i­tor­ing, report­ing, etc. This is an area that I have mas­tered well. In addi­tion, it pro­vides a link between the var­i­ous depart­ments of the com­pa­ny: sales, mar­ket­ing, finance, pro­duc­tion and distribution.

Sup­ply Chain implies a real con­sen­sus of the ser­vices to reach a com­mon goal. And as I do not like to be con­fined to a sin­gle prob­lem, the link between ERP with data and Sup­ply Chain, a trans­verse and col­lab­o­ra­tive busi­ness, came naturally.

What are the essential qualities for your job?

To work in Sup­ply Chain, you have to like to touch every­thing. You have to be a Swiss Army knife capa­ble of under­stand­ing dif­fer­ent issues and ana­lyz­ing the inter­ac­tions between the var­i­ous players.

Appre­ci­ate work­ing togeth­er and in con­sul­ta­tion is essential.

Your biggest challenge?

After 28 years in the tex­tile indus­try, decid­ing to change careers at age 50 was a real chal­lenge for me and a sol­id fam­i­ly project.

Today, I have to learn new tools and, above all, under­stand new pro­duc­tion process­es. Each client has its own issues and reg­u­la­tions. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly the case in the chem­i­cal, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and food indus­tries. It’s real­ly reward­ing and moti­vat­ing for me.

What is your proudest achievement?

The instal­la­tion of the S&OP process man­age­ment soft­ware.

Imple­ment­ing a fore­cast­ing and plan­ning tool such as Infor IBP (Inte­grat­ed Busi­ness Process) in a com­pa­ny where the exist­ing tools no longer met the needs, required a huge invest­ment in time and energy.

I had to quick­ly get up to speed on this soft­ware. Then I had to adapt it to our own prob­lems. I could then count on my ener­gy to moti­vate and train the teams and of course, to accom­pa­ny them in the change. The sat­is­fac­tion of see­ing the good results obtained, makes me say that it was real­ly worth it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the health cri­sis sus­pend­ed the deploy­ment of the last mod­ule of the tool.

What are the difficulties related to the nature of your job?

It is prob­a­bly the man­age­ment of inter­ac­tions between ser­vices. My inter­locu­tors are often users of IT solu­tions. They don’t know the tech­nique behind each action. They often have dif­fi­cul­ty express­ing their needs or pro­ject­ing them­selves onto dif­fer­ent modes of operation.

It is up to us to deci­pher and ana­lyze their needs and to remove the obsta­cles to change that the use of a new soft­ware implies.

If you had to describe your job in one image?

A Swiss Army knife with­out hesitation! 

With the digital revolution of the Supply Chain professions, the stakes are exciting. What is your point of view?

The health cri­sis has clear­ly high­light­ed the impor­tance for com­pa­nies to adapt quick­ly to unprece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tions. Only com­pa­nies equipped with dig­i­tal tools and flex­i­ble busi­ness process­es have the abil­i­ty to find new mod­els to opti­mize their sup­ply chain, includ­ing reduc­ing lead times, man­ag­ing inven­to­ry lev­els, etc.

Thus, com­pa­nies for which the sup­ply chain is at the heart of the process can work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly in real time on cus­tomer demand, sales fore­casts, their own pro­duc­tion capac­i­ties and those of their sup­pli­ers, and thus meet mar­ket require­ments in a high­ly volatile environment.

Thank you Jeanne for par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Pas­sion Sup­ply Chain interview.