Edwige's Blog

Farewell to thee

... dear readers and WAC participants

This is my last post. The time has come. I will conclude on these two very interesting days I spent with Sandrine Berthet at La Bâthie.

The Alcan Day was more than a month ago. Many details are already fading from my memory... But the most important things I learnt and enjoyed are becoming clearer as time passes. I really enjoyed two things, mainly, in this program:

1: I found the people I met very interesting. I witnessed many conversations about somewhat tricky issues sometimes, but everyone really went out of their way to explain the concepts and situations to me. I got the impression that people at La Bâthie were proud to show me around the site and tell me about their work. I am grateful for this, and for the fact that everyone was very honest and open-minded. No false pretences. And in this I am of course referring especially to Sandrine.

2: Seeing La Bâthie answered questions I had long been asking myself about what Factory work is like today. I found it very interesting to see that things I had read in textbooks or articles are true to a certain extent. I saw just how being a factory worker in Europe today worker means something completely different from what it used to 200 years ago. They are very few. They spend their time monitoring sophisticated machines which are controlled through computer systems. Or controlling the quality of the products that are coming out at the other end of the assembly line. On the pictures you can see the controlpanel of the sifters in one of La Bâthie's workshops and the man who controls that powder at the Micro grains Workshop correspond to the standards.

Because of cost differences with developing countries and the latter's ability to attain higher and higher quality standards, it is becoming increasingly difficult for manufacturing activies of all kinds to remain sustainable in countries such as France. During my Alcan Day I realised the importance of Alcan's role as an employer in the valley where it has operated for over a century now. And I felt how everyone was proud of what they did and were fighting hard to reach ever higher standards, to remain in the race...

La Bâthie having about the most up to date equipment there is in the business, I realised that what really makes a difference now is the way it is used by the workers. It is not a matter of working 12 hours a day 7 days a week like workers in China's Guangdong. But a matter of everyone taking initiatives, feeling responsible of finding ways to improve productivity. This is a real case of a concept French economics text books call "enrichissement des tâches" and which I thought was just a fancy expression or an intellectual dream. I was excited to understand what it means for real, and hear that it has already lead to results on some sites!

(I really like this picture, of workers at La Bâthie signing their copyright forms) ;-) or as they say in Japanese \(^o^)/

I also saw the concrete application of a "logistics" course I took recently. I realised just how crucial and complicated it actually is to allocate resources well in order to avoid bottlenecks. How difficult to predict demand and adapt production to it in order to optimize inventories... And other fascinating problems like that!!!!!!!!!

Sorry, I am getting carried away. To conclude (it is late. There is a big party tonight at HEC and I feel like going),  I will just recommend two intersting reads for those of you who are interested in The Factory phenomenon, the way it has shaped the western civilization and the future it will have in our western world and beyond...

L'Etabli by Robert Linhart: I do not know if L'Etabli exists in English but for the francophones or francophiles and factoryphiles, I really recommend this book. A young journalist enlists as an unqualified assembly line worker, in a reknown French car factory, in the early 70ies. He describes the working conditions and atmosphere in great and vivid detail.

Of course and luckily things have changed since then, but I think it gives an idea of what this kind of daily workig life is like!

Another interesting read (in English, thank god) : a recent issue of GRANTA magazine. To quote the back cover:

"The business of making things is becoming a memory for much of the western world-the very business that once gave it mastery over the east and south. Factories don't just make objects. They created (and elsewhere go on creating) away of life..." 

It is time for me to wish you all a pleasant read, a nice evening and a successful career among other things. See you soon in the Eiffel Tower for the end ceremony of the We All Can program!!

It has been a pleasure 

Edwige

 

    

Tezzle?

Dear readers and fellow bloggers !

This contest is near its end and I am submitting to you my next to last post, which will also address the two ideas which we were to choose between for our fourth contribution. My password on the forum is not working tonight and so I will be writing from the rather vague memory I have of the topics… In the meantime here are a few pictures of the musical I helped putting up a few weaks ago (the major reason why many of my posts were delayed).

                                                                                   

We were to convey how our coach’s job illustrates one of the following ideas:

-         either that working is like solving a puzzle: to reach your goal and complete the puzzle you have to carefully look at each piece to understand where it fits best. The result of the work rests on an efficient communication between all team members. This can be assimilated to a good corporate culture OR…

-         working is like playing tennis: it is about setting oneself higher and higher goals. For his/her work to reach it’s maximum potential level, each individual must be offered stimulating personal challenges. He/she will then soar towards unprecedented levels of efficiency… This can be assimilated to a good HR system and staff.

We were supposed to choose between the two. But after thinking for a while, I realised that both ways of understanding work coexist in most cases. A successful performance can be traced both to the way the individual was treated by the firm and to the everyday contact with his/her working team and this team’s collective performance.

I see several reasons to this and I will try to illustrate them with examples from the production site I visited: La Bâthie.

Reason number 1: In production work such as the one I witnessed, agendas are very tight. There is a collective production goal set for each day, as well as one per workshop. Workshops cannot run their activity separately, like they want. If their resources are needed in another one which has more orders and is under more pressure, their own work will wait. Since resources are expensive, they are scarce . Resources (people, certain parts of the production lines which can only be used for one type of grain a tone time) are allocated during production meetings. The  production manager holds the meeting, which involves workshop supervisors mainly. But this meeting, as well as the work itself, can only be successful if there is a lot of trust and transparency between all the people involved.  Every day work at La Bâthie is based on a constant collective decision process based on everyone submitting information and subordinating his unit’s objectives to the collective one. This is not really about individual challenges and rewards.

Reason number 2: On the other hand, a working team is focused on things such as production objectives. Each individual completes certain tasks, defined by his/her job title and known skills. But the team does not in itself ensure that every individual uses his/her talents in the best way possible. Therefore there should be someone exterior to the team to encourage the worker to think about his/her aspirations and satisfaction and to assess the worker’s performance in relation to his/her potential and skills.   

Reason number 3: The collective drive and the individual fit are complementary. The working team and the HR staff can learn a lot from each other. The HR staff helps implement new management tools, organises seminars on Kaizen, on how to “sell” continuous improvement to subordinates for example… The production team members can make interesting judgement on each other, on what the team as a whole needs to improve… And can help the HR staff to fulfil its mission by expressing these needs… Once again, we see here that Human Resources, like other functional units in a firm, can be considered as having a “supplier to customer” relationship with operational units…

 

Reason number 4: One last thought: the tennis player attitude is very important, at one point, in change implementation. When you want to change existing behaviours and attitudes in a group, you begin by convincing a few people. They will then be precursors, pioneers, implementing the change. Integrating it in their behaviour. And other employees may be convinced just  ny watchnig these virtuoso tennis players...

Weekly themes n°1 and 2

I will address themes one and two together, since they are inextricably linked in my coach’s job.

Sandrine’s main goal at Alcan is to make change happen. She sees to it that the action plans developed by Alcan in the field of Continous Improvement or Environment, Health and Security are put into practice on the sites which are part of the B&A division. She also participates in the deployment of the HR tool which are needed to support the change (see post on My Coach)

In order for Alcan to reach these goals, people have been appointed specifically, at site level or in headquarters, to run and embody programs such as “Green&Black belt” or “EHS First” (see post on Innovation and My second Alcan Day).

These people, just like Sandrine, are facing a challenge: They are responsible for these new programs, but they can not achieve their goal alone. They need the help of other people. Indeed, if the values and procedures which it is their job to implement are to be accepted by everyone and become a natural reflex, these values need the support of others. And most of all: by HR staff. In fact, Continuous Improvement and EHS people strongly need their HR colleagues, to define the specific needs of the personnel and to define an action plan customized to the site.

“But, complains Sandrine, even young, high potential managers prove to be reluctant to change in their own, unconscious and subtle way… Indeed, everyone tends to consider that their duty is to follow the initial job description they were given meticulously and that’s it. In other words, they are all speeding along a road, and would never dream of taking one step outside of the concrete…”

The idea Sandrine conveyed was that people do not realise that the duties they should focus on in their job may change with time. They should define their duty as that of a supplier, always attentive to the evolving needs and desires of his customers. Whose identity, by the way, may also evolve.

If employees were always proactively attentive to the way they could best put their competencies to use and create value for Alcan, the organisation would be much more efficient. Change will not happen if only the people who are in charge of it try to make the company move in the right direction!

“I try to push my colleagues in this direction, encourage each and everyone of them to define who his “clients“ and “suppliers” are…" Sandrine concludes.

Sandrine works with people all over the world: HR, EHS and CI teams at headquarters in Paris or in Canada, regional CI champions and EHS people as well as employees involved in these three areas at site level (see post on My coach or My Alcan Day 2 for more detail about Sandrine’s job or the international aspect of it...). The fact that sites are far away from each other (Canada, Australia, Europe, Ghana…) does not make it easy to make managerial concepts come alive at the same speed everywhere… Obviously, when it comes to taking initiatives towards Continous Improvement, workers at Awaso (Ghana) or Gardanne (France) do not play in the same league.

Creating regular contact between sites, encouraging them to share best practices regularly, is also part of Sandrine’s job. Making all the sites of Bauxite and Alumina progress at the same pace is a permanent challenge!          

My Alcan Day Part 2

Hi readers and fellow bloggers !

I am done with my duties as president of my school’s annual Musical and, as a consequence, am back into the world of Alcan, alumina and industrial challenges !!

Welcome Back to La Bâthie!

I had left you with a short description of my coach Sandrine’s and her job as well as of my first day at La Bâthie… As Sandrine, Jean-Luc (who was to take up the duty of plant manager at La Bâthie a few weeks later) and I sat down for dinner at the Roma hotel that same evening, I looked back upon all that I had discovered . I had met quite a few people who had explained to me what was done at the factory (see post on the workshops !) and which production goals they spent their time working towards.

But I did not yet have a clear picture of the relationships between these people. I hadn’t either grasped Sandrine’s role in La Bâthie or the relevance of the concepts she had made me familiar with (see post about innovation at La Bâthie) to this particular site. I would discover the answer to these questions the following morning :

08 :00    After a quick breakfast at the hotel, we drove back to the site. Before anything else, Jean-Luc invited  Sandrine and me into his office. He showed us a Powerpoint presentation meant to increase employees’ awareness of how important it is to respect Security procedures. Indeed, the previous evening, Jean-luc had spoken quite a lot about this being a big challenge and representing a big corporate culture shift !

Employees do understand the purpose of procedures intended to increase efficiency. But they often have a fatalistic approach to accidents. They consider these an inevitable part of their working environment. They find security procedures (which often make it more complicated to use the equipment) annoying. For example : iron railings preventing direct access to machinery and which have to be removed before any reparation can be done.

But accidents CAN be prevented and MUST be since their consequences are serious and potentially deadly ! Accidents occur whenever there is a combination of

1 : a risky situation (a loose bag at the top of a pile or an obstacle which is littering the floor for example)

2 : the presence of  a human being

SOLUTION :

1 : Encouraging every employee to bear a critical eye on their surroundings and to report any abnormal situation event if they are not directly reponsible.

2 : reducing direct contact between workers and machines as much as possible

In order to achieve these goals and accomplish this culture shift, Alcan has created a program called « EHS First » (EHS standing for Environment, Health and Safety). This program comprises

-     seminars for employees as well as…

-     the appointment of  an EHS manager for each site, who keeps employees informed and is their contact person for all issues concerning security.

09 :00   Sandrine and I were told that M. Cattani, who sandrine had asked to meet, was waiting for us inside the factory. He supervises the maintenance workshop at La Bâthie and has been selected as one of the three green belts of the site (see post on Innovation).

We put on our security helmets, left the office buiding and a few minutes later settled down around a table in a calm area of the maintenance workshop. Cattani, a thin and quiet man in his fifties, seemed rather shy to begin with. 

« What did you think about the Green Belt training session which you attended a few months ago ? began Sandrine. Was it useful to you ?

After hesitating a little Cattani mumbled :

-     Frankly I found the presentation too complicated. For a while I really felt uneasy about having been appointed as green belt !

-     All right, I see. How has your project worked out ?

-     Well… defining the problem and finding a way to measure it as well as to measure the improvements was easy.

Cattani had been assigned the task of reducing the amount of alumina grains spilled on the sides of  a conveyor belt in workshop n°3 (see post on the workshops). He decided to put small boxes at strategic spots along the onveyor belt, to measure the amount of powder wasted. Cattani felt that this mission made sense and had a real purpose for the workshop, but…

-     My workers were increadibly suspicious about the Green Belt project. They simply refused to cooperate in the second phase of the project, in which I needed them. I had asked them to empty the boxes when full and to keep record of this. But they didn’t. They even mocked me and the project by leaving a green belt on my desk one night !

-     How did you deal with this situation ?

Cattani told us he simply had responded by doing all the work himself. And then the workers quietly stopped resiting the project and did what had been asked of them. A component of the belt had to be changed. The team made a collective decision about which new component (there were several alternatives) to buy. 

-     They ended up expressing interest and satisfaction at the result of the project, concluded Cattani.

This conversation was an interesting illustration of how Green Belt projects are actually carried out and provided me with an example of resistance to change and with the demonstration that it CAN be overcome !

                

09 :45   I hurried back towars te office building, to attend the « production meeting » of the day. Jean Deville, production manager of La Bâthie, (see picture) had told me to attend. Every morning all the workshop supervisors as well as the man in charge of logistics and a representant of the site’s commercial agents come together and discuss their production goals for the day as well as any problems they have come across.

Although I by now knew quite a lot about La Bâthie, I understood little of the conversations I heard. Even French readers will surely agree that sentences like « On est en avance d’un jour sur les fours, surtout en ChristAlba 2 mm » are far from having an obvious meaning…

Although I had trouble grasping the ideas behind the technical vocabulary, I realised it was a very efficient meeting. When an issue was raised everyone was attentive and often contributed with a comment. It was obvious that themes whch were discussed were important. As Jean deville told me once the meeting was over :

« Each of these guys presents his figures to all of us : how much he produced yesterday and his goal for today. And he must stand for these figures and defend them. It makes the figures come alive and makes the men more responsible. We usually talk about

1.   EHS First

2.   Production goals

3.   Quality standards

4.   Various equipment or personnel issues, in order to reach these goals and meet those standards.

He concluded : « The good thing about this meeting is that each of us gets to know anything that happened in the workshops during the last night. We can anticipate problems and it is easier to think of solutions together than alone when it is already too late ! » 

10 :00   Sandrine joined us. Indeed she wanted to discuss two issues with Jean Deville : how he felt about his job (he is also quite new at La Bâthie) and what his expectations would be from a training session on EHS for rank and file factory workers. We once again discussed how important it is to make workers understand that in the end security regulations are made in THEIR interest ! And it should be stressed that everyone must be alert in case they see something wrong. « Co-awareness is THE idea ! said Jean Deville. And when it comes to the training sessions, I think there is ONE important thing : the academic content must not be excessively heavy. »

He had seen how discouraged Cattani was when he returned from his green Belt training session.          

« I mean those overly academic presentations inhibit the men who are our most valuable asset : people who have expertise and who understand the workers. People who have a long and rich working experience and who can teach really teach you and me something! »

11 :15 Sandrine and I walked over to the maintenance workshop once more for our last meeting of the morning : We were welcomed by Christophe Rondeau, production engineer for workshops 1 to 4 and maintenance.

Concerning training sessions, he expressed his enthusiasm for the one on EHS which all team leaders had attended. « Everyone was really satisfied and came back to La Bâthie feeling eager to implement EHS standards ! »

He then talked about the market and how La Bâthie was doing (interesting because it reflects what all his colleagues were having on their minds these days) :

« The standard grain workshops are currently producing 70% of the volumes sold at La Bâthie ! We increased our production volumes by 25% this year thereby breaking the previous record ! These are also good times at the MicroGrain workshop. Demand is very strong. Considering the size of our inventories, and our limited personnel and machine capacities, delivering our orders on time is a permanent challenge ! And a very positive one ! 

12 :00   Sandrine and I left the site and drove through the sunny Savoie valley once more, to catch our train in Chambéry.

Epilogue

Now, I must thank the readers who have followed me all the way to the end of this post. As for the others, who may have skipped a part of the text above and gone straight for the epilogue, you may be wondering why I wrote so much. Why I went into such elaborate detail. Well…

The interesting thing about my first Alcan day is easy to express : just look at the rather impressive pictures I took when I visited the workshops.

But during my second Alcan day , what I enjoyed was to hear every worker’s story and see the passion several of them feel for their work. To hear them talk about the production challenges and how they made these challenges their own…

Above all, I saw before my very own eyes the importance of a good HR system in a firm. Especially on a site such as La Bâthie where hierarchical levels and cultural backgrounds are far from homogenous. In my opinion a good HR system depends on two things :

-     A way of treating individuals : providing them with interesting training sessions and compensation programmes for them to learn new skills and feel there is space in the company for them to grow.

-     An efficient information flow : Having good people in the firm at all levels, who motivate others, understand the HR concepts and promote them internally. When people of intermediate level understand what happens above them as well as below and are curious and receptive to change, the company can go far. And I now realise that this may be the one common characteristic of all the people Sandrine and I met during my second Alcan Day !   

I will elaborate on these 2 ideas in a future post, since they are directly linked to the two weekly themes we have been given...

Two types of Innovation

During my stay at La Bâthie, a specialty alumina refinery in the Savoie region (France), I understood the central importance of Innovation at Alcan, in at least two ways.

  -  My coach Sandrine did not fail to tell me that Alcan owns the most high tech upstream B&A assets in the world! Indeed the Australian Bauxite&Alumina unit which creates and sets up the company’s refineries all over the world also sells its first class, constantly innovating service to competitors.

-  Sandrine also made me familiar with the keystone managerial concept which supports and promotes innovation at Alcan! Once upon a time… or, rather, two years ago, Alcan asked a consultancy firm to outline what strategic changes the company should carry out in order to maximise value. The survey underlined that in order to remain competitive and retain its ability at managerial innovations, Alcan needed, among other things, to create an efficient Continuous Improvement system.

Implementing Continous Improvement: Black and Green belts

1. THE PROBLEM:

Today at Alcan most transformation processes are carried out by machines, which are monitored at a distance, through a computer system, by the few workers who remain. But constantly upgrading the machines is not enough! Greater and greater skill is required from workers. They must be able to monitor this increasingly valuable equipment and to adjust it to the specific nature of the factory and of the requirements of the orders whiwh are to be delivered.

And these organizational improvements can not be imagined by engineers but by the workers who use the machines in their specific context. Indeed they are the ones best suited to find pragmatic solutions to problems that arise in their everyday work. And it is crucial that they accept and put into practice the improvements (which is much more likely if they have developed them themselves).

The idea is very simple: for Continuous Improvement to mean something to employees you have to bring it all the way down to rank and file situations, you have to make employees directly responsible of carrying out CI projects.

2. THE CONCEPT:

So Alcan's HR team began selecting a certain number of employees (team leaders or workshop supervisors usually in the area of production or maintenance but not only) to whom the responsibility of carrying out one or a few CI projects, together with the team they manage, was given.

These people are called Green Belts. Their green belt project is supposed to take about 20% of their working time. A typical green belt project could be to reduce the amount of grains which are spilled on the ground by a carried belt…

At a higher level, managers are selected to become black belts. A CI project is also assigned to each of them. But Black belt projects are more global and managerial.

The Black belts are supervised by CI champions, one for each geographical area where Alcan operates.

3. THE GOAL:

Today 0,7% of Alcan’s employees are black belts. 4,5% are green belts. The goal is that 80% of employees belong to one of these categories 10 years from now! The idea is to instil this problem solving and initiative taking attitude in all rank and file employees: very ambitious! Once CI has become a natural reflex for everyone, black and green belts will no longer be needed and the system as it is being deployed today will be put aside, like a crutch no longer needed by a recovering patient…

4. To see how this program is carried out on a daily basis, please read the post, soon to come, about the second part of my Alcan Day!

Let's elaborate a little bit...

Hi everyone

I haven't been very active on my blog and will try to make up for that in the future. Actually I am very busy (but who isn't: judging from the other blogs most of the WAC participants seem to have lots of actvities, hobbies, passions...).

What has been keeping me busy lately, apart from schoolwork and all that kind of stuff, is my student club activities on the campus of the school where I study: HEC Paris. I am involved in two clubs, mainly:

1 : HEC's Girls Rugby Club: "le FHR".

Just to give you an idea of what our training sessions are like... and to show you the campus

2 : I am an active member of another HEC student club called Backstage which puts up a musical every year. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Footloose, Mamma Mia are a few examples of previous shows. Last year, I had one of the main parts in a musical based on the movie by Alan Parker: The Commitments.   

Great memories. It took many rehersals, but we really had a lot of fun! 

This year, as the president of Backstage, I and a team of 6 other people are putting up our own show: "Pulp Odyssey" which is inspired from Quentin Tarantino's films. Any WAC participants or blog readers who happen to be in Paris around the 18th of April and would be interested are welcome to see the show!

A bientôt!

Edwige

About me

Hi everyone!

As some of you pointed out in your comments, this presentation lacked pictures up till now. So here you go! 

Well, I’m half Swedish, half French, I am a student at HEC Paris, and in terms of leadership qualities I would say…

I’ll stop right there. If that was what this self-portrait was about we would just need to paste the ME-brands we all created during the briefing on march 3rd on our blogs. I find that writing this self portrait is not an easy assignment. Indeed, should the portrait be defined by it’s purpose, by what the readers will find relevant? Or should a true self portrait be an exact imprint of all that flows through someone’s mind at a given time? At any rate, I believe this self portrait should not comprise the qualities I believe I possess (especially managerial ones, since those still need to be proved). My qualities are best judged by you, fellows who All Can.

Who am I? My interests:

Literature (classics from all cultures: there are so many masterpieces to discover!) Culture and History in a very broad sense Music (a field in which feel I have a lot to learn and like others to make me listen to what they like)

Rugby (I play in the girls’ rugby team of my school and enjoy the intense physical effort it implies, the team spirit, and the very sophisticated rules) see next post for pictures 

I also enjoy fishing (which I do every summer, in Sweden) and take interest in aquariums.

But more importantly I feel very strongly about Nature in general (am a member of Greenpeace).

This may seem paradoxical to some of you...

I take a very strong interest in other cultures and countries, with a special focus on Sweden and... India!!

I could go on like this forever, there are so many things to say… but those are the most significant items.

A core value of mine: I think it is extremely important that people be generous enough to be prepared to spend a lot of energy making their dreams come true (even very simple dreams, in everyday life). If nobody makes this effort, no collective projects ever come into being. Quite logically, one of the faults I most hate in others is selfishness and inaction.

My shortcomings: I tend to fret about too many things and sometimes, as a result, am undecisive. But I guess that is due to my age and to the fact that I am still uncertain about what I will do later in life.

About my coach

                                About my coach :  2 days with Sandrine Berthet

Last thursday I took an early train to Chambéry (in the mountains of Savoie, France), where I was to meet my coach Sandrine Berthet for the first time. I had time to roam around for quite a while, searching the middle sized French town for at least modestly photogenic spots…

      

       the historical centre of

               Chambéry

At 12:40 I was standing outside the Hertz shop facing the station and where we would rent a car in order to reach the factory. I felt intensely curious and was really looking forward to what would I would discover, that day and the next. My curiosity was sustained for a few minutes more than the appointed meeting time, but then I spotted Sandrine emerging from the train station. She crossed the street briskly and walked towards me, pulling a small suitcase. 

I was surprised to find that she was shorter than me, but here eyes were just as blue as on the photograph. She was wearing jeans and a black sweater. Indeed, as she had told me per mail “if you were a suit at the plant, you will look like a fool!”, I was happy to have followed her advice.

As soon as we began talking, I recognized her voice, which I was already familiar with. A few days before Sandrine had argued that there would be so much to see and do at the plant that some preparatory explanations might be useful. And we eventually ended up spending 2 hours on the phone, talking about Sandrine’s job. My understanding of her mission and the context in which she works of course improved greatly when I saw her in action at La Bâthie. I’ll tell you all about that in my next post.

Sandrine works for the Bauxite and Alumina business group. Her official job title is “HR Manager – Integrated management System”.

What it actually means is that she works for and with 3 different kinds of people: Human Resource managers, Alcan’s Continuous Improvement Team and Environment, Health and Security people. Her mission is to ensure that these 2 programmes are implemented worldwide and that they are efficient, always in the perspective of Maximising Value. There are 3 means of achieving this:

-         creating appropriated training seminars for Alcan employees at all levels

-         adapting traditional HR tools (career plans and compensation) in order to create incentives and reward managers who help turn CI and EHS requirements/procedures into lasting everyday reflexes.

-         Making sure everything possible is done to motivate all employees, especially rank and file.

What is Sandrine's work like? She spends 50% of her time at headquarters in Paris and the rest travelling around the world. She visits each and every one of Alcans B&A sites and helps managers to implement CI and EHS. She discusses improvements and obstacles with managers, but also asks employees at all hierarchical levels for their opinion and vision of these programmes.

As we drive along the road in a beautiful Savoie valley, she keeps picking examples from sites all over the world: the Gove plant in Australia, Vaudreuil in Quebec, Awaso in Ghana…

Sandrine is very direct, a style which probably becomes natural when one spends the rest of one's time conveying new ideas and convincing others to engage in change (ie communicating) or teaching others to do this.  No unnecessary circumlocutions. For instance, when describing the Gove site in Australia: “Our most profitable plant: the bauxite is just next to the refinery: they are virtually rolling in money! But what a place: nothing but the desert and the sea (which is swarming with crocodiles and poisonous jellyfish)!”.   ;-)

She talks about the big picture…

“In a business like this you need guts: every decision you make has huge financial consequences: the technology needed in the industry is expensive. You cannot change or even stop a production line just like that as in lighter processing industries. And the human consequences of every decision are also tremendous!”

…but also about grass-root changes in behaviour which, when seen through a magnifying glass, turn out to be strategic. Every time a new security procedure is respected, every time a workshop operator takes the initiative in solving a problem without waiting for his superiors to come across it, Alcan’s CI and EHS programmes take a huge step towards becoming permanent reflexes.    

During the two days Sandrine and I spent at the plant, I saw Sandrine in action, carrying her mission out. I noticed how she adapted her message and attitude to various people she had meetings with and I was impressed by her ability to articulate and embody what at first had seemed to me quite an abstract managerial concept. She is among the people who make the concept come alive, and turn it into a vision!

As a conclusion, what made the strongest impression on me, is Sandrine’s enthusiasm and passion for her work. Whatever the time of day and the number of hours she has already spent working, she is always efficient. The stream of interesting things she has to say never ebbs. And that is lucky since, as she puts it: “It is wonderful to work with people all over the world! But there is a drawback: having colleagues in ALL time zones means that your phone never stops ringing!! There is always work to be done with someone somewhere!

My Alcan Day

“change management” or how to implement

Alcan’s corporate culture worldwide:

 

Just to set up the scenery: I spent my two Alcan days at a French specialty alumina refinery called La Bâthie and located near the city of Chambéry in the Savoie region… I spoke French to all the people I met and will be facing rather tricky translation problems. I beg you to be indulgent!

13:00 Sandrine and I are driving towards the factory. As we are drawing close to the Factory she starts providing me with facts about La Bâthie. “The site is 110 years old. It was set up there in the first place because cheap hydroelectric power was available. Today La Bâthie is a specialty alumina refinery. Alumina powder is brought from abroad to be reprocessed here”.People at La Bâthie work day and night to turn white powder into… white powder! But with different cheical and physical properties and much more value for Alcan’s customers.

 

13:30 We parked our car and entered the site. As we walked towards the office building following the pedestrian security paths I was surprised at how few people I saw. I had imagined the place swarming with workers. As it were we only came across one employee, transporting alumina palets with a forklift truck.

 Once inside the office Sandrine introduced me to the HR Manager: Monique Veuiller, to Jean Armanni, the man responsible for EHS as well as to the production manager of La Bâthie: Jean Deville. I will describe their work and the way the factory is run in Day 2 (for those who Sandrine and I spent time with) and in a future post (for the others).

 

13:45 Jean Deville called one of the two production engineers, Jérôme Evrard, and the two of them showed me around the site. There are 4 main workshops at La Bâthie and we visited all of them: it was very impressive see specific post soon to come!

As we walked around the various workshops Jérôme (talking with a worker in the micrograin workshop in the picture to the left) told me about the factory: “As you see almost all operations are done by machines. There are never more than 5 people working in a workshop at the same time. The work mainly consists in checking and monitoring the various machines through a computer system. The machines never stop: production continues all night. We therefore have 3 teams of workers, one for the morning, one for afternoon and early evening, one for the night. They switch times every two weeks. This plus the dust and noise makes working conditions tough”.

“There is also the heat of the ovens, he added, but they give you a suntan so that at least you look good!”

Jérôme also told me about his work: “I am responsible for all special, very fine micrograin powders, which are produced in a specific workshop. I manage the work team, see that orders are processed and delivered on time, build up the inventories. In short: I see to it that production runs smoothly!”

This is not an easy task: indeed machines cannot be changed or stopped easily, the various powders must be produced in large quantities. Demand fluctuates a lot and at La Bâthie there is not much space for inventories. Besides keeping more than three weeks of production is inventory would be very expensive!

17:30 The factory visits are over. I am back at the office, where Sandrine and Monique Veuiller are working together: Sandrine is asking Monique how she feels about her work; indeed she arrived at La Bâthie just 3 months ago. They discuss labour relations at the site. Sandrine recommends that several employees attend certain training seminars. She introduces Monique to a new assessment tool for employees who are involved in Continuous Assessment projects: see future post about CI and EHS

19:00 My first Alcan day is over. Sandrine and I  drive down to hotel Roma where we are to spend the night.

DAY # 2 and the other posts I have anounced will follow soon!