Thomas B.'s Blog

Final assessment

               This is the crucial moment… the end, the final goodbye, the conclusion. And the terrible question: what did I get from this experience, what did I learn. I am supposed to talk again about my coach job, but I consider that you heard (in fact…read) enough about his job, through the different posts. I think there are more interesting things to tell at present.

So let me tell you a small story : this is the story of a young student, that was not really attracted by the industry, thinking that it was old-fashioned, and that only services were a interesting field. Then he discovered a project from a huge industrial firm, which looks innovative and selective. Selection, interview; a challenge… hey, that looks interesting! So he decided to play the game, tries to be selected and succeed. And now starts the great part of the story : soon, he discovers that the people (the WAC team and the others members of Alcan) are really involved in the project, that big firm does not always mean inhumanity, that Canadian people are pretty funny… Then he meets his coach, a really nice guy that is patient enough to explain him what he is doing, and even sharing his life sometime… The jobs in the industry does not seem boring any longer, and the values of the firm are even attractive, as the people are…

I must admit that my story is pretty Manichean, but it is true from the beginning to the end. I did not had a really good image of such giants of the industry, but I truly changed my mind. I had the chance to discover this, and I do not regret my choice.

So I would like to tell you about three persons that were crucial in the fact that I changed my mind.

The two first persons are Sandrine and Angelique. They were the first contacts I had with the company, and they were so nice! You really had the impression that they cared about us, that they choose us because it was us and noone else. And I know it is not just an impression, they showed it to me when I was at the hospital. So let me thank them.

                The third person is of course my coach. Xavier welcomed me really nicely, was patient and open, and I was not in front of a man that was explaining me in a cold way what he was doing in his life, but I was facing a man that was almost a friend, introducing me to his job, and most of all to his life. His like at Alcan, but his personal life too. And the best way to discover something is to discover it with a friend…

Of course, I could tell you about all the others people I met, and they were all nice and gave you the will to work with them. But it would be too long.

Why all this? No, it is not to win this trip to Canada, because I know that some of my fellows did much better things than mine, and because I did not do all this just with the hope of going there (even if I wish I will go there one day!). It is to convince you, my readers, that the real strength of Alcan, what I discovered in this project, is that what makes a company attractive, is THE PEOPLE working in (the values are crucial too, but let's consider that values without people applying them leads to nothing). And Alcan has great people.

I learn that industry or services, big companies or small firms… nothing is more important than the people working in, and that you can never tell before seeing it with your own eyes. So be aware. Or trust me, at least concerning Alcan…

I thank you all of you for having read me during these few weeks, I hope I you know more about Alcan, about Xavier too, and that I gave you the motivation to discover new things, and to care about the human side of firms, because trust me, all the difference is there…

Team spirit and the pleasure to interact with the others

                 Last topic! And it deals with… the capacity of my coach to be a human being! Hard question to answer, and I think I have no choice in the answer if I want keep my friendly relationship with him… so yes, my coach is a wonderful person who loves his fellows and loves working with other human being, he has a heart big like this!

Humm… let's start the real version of the facts. In fact, as you understood it through my different posts, my coach works more or less on his own, since he is constantly negociating with the clients of Alcan.

BUT, that does NOT mean that he does not interact with others! Indeed, first of all he is always in contact with the employees of the plant, because they are the ones that create the products he is selling! Secondly, my coach is taking part in think-tank concerning innovation (cf innovation), and even if it is not his main task, it is nevertheless a team work.

To end, and it is the main point, Xavier is constantly working together with his colleagues from all over Europe in order to negociate with a single voice in front of the different branchs of the laboratories. Indeed, the different negociators and sellers of Alcan have to be consistent and since the negociations concern often different products and different areas, there is a need to coordinate all the voices of Alcan; to get the better results possible. So you can say that there is a real team work!

               So do not say that my coach is a single player! But say that he likes his independance…

Innovation...

Hello everyone!

I am sorry for being a little late concerning the third topic, but I recently went out of the hospital (were I spent around a week) for a stupid disease... but everything is fine today! So let's start talking about innovation...

First impression: how can a negociator like Xavier contribute to innovation? He is just suppose to deal with the clients... so what can he invent, what can he change, what can he improve?

Asking these questions, you get part of the answer in fact. Indeed, as a negociator, being constantly in contact with the clients, Xavier is perfectly aware of the expectations of these ones, and he knows better than everyone what should be done to improve production, delivery, quality... That is why Xavier is member of a "innovation group", that is to say that he takes part with others in a brainstorming to improve and innovate; this task force deals with more than 15 projects and meets twice a year to discuss about the solutions they have found and how to implement it.

At the time I am writing (and you are reading, and I thank you for that!), the group is working on a project of digital printing, a process that would considerably improve the speed of production of the packagings, and even lower their costs... you can see that there are concrete implementations of the work of this group, and that the results could be at the origin of the sucess of Alcan (or at least the Pharma Packaging Department) in the coming years, or at the origin of its failure (hopefuly it will not be the case...) if they do not find a better answer that the competition!

So it is a pretty huge challenge, and everyone is concerned about the innovation process since it represents the futur of the firm!

I would like to make a wink to the weallcan team, since there project is totally in touch with the spirit of innovation of the firm; thank you for this nice and innovative project, and keep going this way!

Have a nice week!

Born to be international!

Wake up everybody!

And the second topic is... is my coach an "international" guy? Would be really funny to ask him the question. He would answer that since he is speaking in english 95% of the time, yes, you can consider him as a pure french guy...

Being strategic director -id est negociator with huge laboratories- in the Pharmaceutical Packaging Division leads to deal with lots of people around the world. If the suppliers of Xavier are the plants, most of which are in France or at least in Europe, his customers have definatly no common nationality.

Indeed, as I explained it in the former posts, laboratories have different organizations. That is to say that somtimes Xavier has to deal with national headquarters (which is pretty rare), sometimes with continental headquarters (like at a european level) and finally exceptionnaly with global ones. Moreover, negociations are not always lead by zone but they can be focused on products; again, there are no barriers and the same product is often sold in Germany, in China and in Brasil...

I attended to a conference call between Xavier and others "callers" from different nationalities, and it is pretty funny to recognize each one thanks to his accent! I guess the french accent is one of the worse, but I particularly like the german one...

Anyway, what you have to remember is not that Xavier speaks english all day long, or that he had an english wife (in fact yes, you should remember this point), but that he almost does not know the concept of country in business. He is working in terms of areas (Europe, Asia, South America...), partly because it make sense considering the level of costs. When I said that he was abroad two days a week on average, I did not meant he went to Monaco... but in lots of different countries where he has to work hard :USA, Germany,Saint Moritz, Canada, Megeve...

In fact, my coach is just born to be international... did I told you that he was born in Corse? After all, the island of Corse is not really french, not really italian, not really independant...

First topic

Today we are going to talk about... clients and suppliers!

Well well... who are the clients of my coach? Who are his suppliers? Pretty good questions, and particularly interesting since my coach is... a negociator!

As you discovered it reading the presentation of my dear coach, he is a kind of killer... that is to say that he is the guys that makes laboratories getting mad during the negociations. Everyone fears him... except his wife, hopefuly.

The position of the negociator is pretty classical, since it is easy to define who is the supplier and who is the client. In fact what is interesting is not to know who it is but what relationships do they have.

Let's start with the suppliers

Xavier is selling pharmaceutical packagings, so his suppliers are the one that produce the packaging. It is pretty logical. But let me tell you something striking about Xavier. When I met him during my Alcan day, it was in the plant of Saint Maur, were he is working most of the time. Why does he work in St Maur? After all, he could have an ofice in paris, and his job is to negociate on the phone or in front of his clients, so it has nothing to do with producing packagings... Why is he working in an office in the east suburbs next to a plant? That is without doubt the interesting part of the question...

In fact, it is pretty simple, and I already talked a bit about that in my presentation of Xavier. He stays in St Maur because he wants to be close from his suppliers, because be aware of what is possible or not, what is complex and what is not, what are the problems in the production and what are the solutions, enables you to be smarter and stronger when it is time to negociate. It sounds logical, but not everyone would have adopted this "policy". Xavier eats at least two or three times every week with the employees of the plant; he tries to be constantly in tuch with the people working here and providing him what he is suppose to sell. I must admit that this attitude is to my mind really smart, and surely efficient.

Concerning the clients

As you know it now, the clients of Xavier are pharmaceutical laboratories. The fact is that he has to negociate on lots of different products and with lots of different people, even in the same company.

Something interesting about the laboratories is that they have often not a structure that negociates for products alla round the world. Thatdoes mean that sometimes Xavier have to negociate for the same product with two different clients... from the same company. But one is negociating for Europe, the other one for Asia. Maybe you are not surprised, but I was. Anyway, the relationship with his clients is complex, made of arguments, bluffs, efforts, concessions... and that is what Xavier loves. It is a game of power between giants, Alcan one the one hand, Aventis or Bayer one the other hand... and Xavier has to satisfy his clients, but he has to satisfy his suppliers too... by selling at the highest reasonnable price. Clients are not really friends, but not really ennemies too; there are no feelings, just figures that have to be reached...

To conclude, I would say that paradoxically, the supplier side is the human side, meaning that there is a place for true relationships, while the client side is the professionnal and "cold" side, made of strategy and calculations. But that does not mean that it is a bad side...

SORRY...

Sorry for being so late to publish all this but I have huge problemes with my weblog!

I hope you will enjoy all this, because I had a fabulous time during my alcan day. I hope it was the same for you...

Hi everybody!

Let me share with you one of my passions: travelling!

I had the chance to travel a lot, when I was young, with my parents. Later, it was with my friends or my school, and finally it is sometimes...alone!

I could tell you during hours about Egypt, Greece, Morocco, Jordanian... or the others countries of this beautiful continent, Europe: Germany, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, England... but some other students of the WAC are surely more talented to speak about these ones.

So, I will tell you about my last trip...in the United States. Not very original will you tell me... and I do not agree! In fact I fall in love with the Grand Canyon!

I have seen beautiful things, the pyramids, Petra in Jordanian... but I was really amazed by the Grand Canyon. I have posted a few pictures for you, just to give you the will to go there. It is a incredible place, you have surely never seen anything that big! Just imagine that it is more than 300km long, more than 2 km deep.

I had the chance to sleep one night with one friend, lost in the middle of this huge place, with noone around us, and believe me, you feel like nowhere else... particularly because you are almost surrounded by snakes and other charming animals! It is worth take the plane from anywhere and at anytime to see this, believe me. Feeling so small and weak is so incredible and so magical...

Hard to tell everything I feel about this place. Hopefully the pictures will convince you if I did not succeed... Let's dream...

MY ALCAN DAY

You all know roughly what is alcan. A few word about the firm, just to be sure that we all speak about the same firm…

SHORT REMINDER

Alcan is the world second largest producer of primary aluminium, a global producer of value added engineering products and composites and a leading full-service provider in most packaging sector. Alcan means 88,000 employees around the world (in 58 countries) and has revenues pro forma of US$25.7 billion.

In a word, it is a big firm, with lot of peopole working in, and with lot of money. At least, that is what they said…héhéhé. With me you will know all the truth about Alcan!

WHERE IS MY COACH IN THIS ENORMOUS OCTOPUS CALLED ALCAN?

For a better idea, let's see a small graph:Download organigramme.ppt

What you should understand from this graph is that my coach is not dependant from any place or department (of course he has to report to Lionel Lob, the president of Alcan Pharmaceutical Packaging for Europe); he is working pretty much alone. The term alone is not really relevant, since he is in contacts with customers all day long, but, I mean, there is noone else than him in his office…

WHAT DID I DO DURING ONE AND A HALF DAY?

Pretty lots of things… I know, this is not an answer, but I love answering stupidly to such questions. What precisly did I do?

Well, my first day was spent… in train station because of strikes… hopefully my beloved coach has a car and helped going through this typical french habit… In fact, I visited the plant of Saint Maur, in which Xavier is working. Indeed, even if Xavier is not working directly with the plant, he likes to be in contact with what "concretly brings money to Alcan". So I had the chance to visit the factory, learning how to paint on aluminium, how to cut the sheets…
It was a clearly interesting afternoon, because, after all, it is better to know the products you sell!
I spent not only the first day there, but the next morning too, and that gave me the chance to meet a big part of the staff of the plant, from the aluminium workers to the "green belts" and the plant manager… but I will develop this later.
Sadly (or luckily!), because the safety rules are really strict, I could not take a lot of pictures of the plant or the products. But i still have a few images I stole to Xavier…
My last afternoon was spent in Sevres, at the european headoffice of the pharmaceutical packaging, where I met the coworkers of Xavier, concerning the communication and marketing side of his job. Sadly, I can not tell you a lot about what happened since some informations are to to be revealed to the competitors… pretty logical, isn't it?
After all my interviews and discussions, I had a better idea, first of what is Alcan, secondly of what is the Pharmaceutical department.

THE THINGS I LEARN ON ALCAN

They eat children!!!! No I am just kitting, it is pretty rare that they do things like that…
Seriously, You have to understand a few crucial thing. Alcan acquired during the past ten years lots fo companies,  and it is hard for the simple employee to feel close from Alcan, since he probably never met anyone from the "historical" Alcan.
But this is through the values of the firm that Alcan create a "firm spirit". There are three key-points that everyone has to know about Alcan.

1. EHS : Environement, Health and Safety
Do not  be surprised if the first thing an Alcanian shows you is the exit doors… he is not crazy, or they are all. In fact, in an industry that might be sometimes risky, Alcan wants its employees to be safe. Human life has really a high value, and everything is done to avoid any accident. It is obviously the first and key value of the firm, respect and preserv its employees. You could laught, saying that they have crazy rules and that just do that for their image… everyone tought that the first time. But having spent some time with the members of this firm, I can promess you that they have a high opinion of human life, and you can feel anywhere and everywhere.

2. EVA : Economic added Value
This is the second value: money! Because the management team wants the shares price too double every five years, Alcan needs to reach a growth of at least 15% every year ; that is the idea of maximizing the value. That is why the plants have to reach objectives of revenues, considering that they "rent" the assets they use to the group (rate of 10% of the assets)… And there come the green and black belts!
At the beginning, I thought that would be people doing karate able to protect every employee from any agression… but no, it is not the case. Too bad, that could be a good idea…
Green and black belts are supposed to track the unused assets, to improve the use of the existing and used ones, in fact to improve the profitability of the plants. They can work on everything, costs, trainings, human ressources…

3. Continuous improvment
The last value is the continuous improvment, that means that Alcan has to keep in touch with the technology progress, and thus has to improve it skills continuously. Fast or slow improvment benefits to employees too, since they have training days every year to improve their skills.

To conclude on Alcan, I was really happy to discover this firm, and I was all the happier since I discover a humanist firm, that cares about its employees and their achievments, not only about results. This is pretty rare…

HOW DOES THE PHARMACEUTICAL PACKAGING DEPARTMENT WORK?

It is pretty simple, they buy and they sell, and so they earn money… You need a few more details? All right… First let's have a look at that: Download business_overview.ppt

Who are the competitors?
Amcor, Hueck, Constancia… but they are all much smaller than Alcan.

Who are the suppliers?
Mostly, it is…Alcan itself (80%) that supply the aluminium.

What are the most sold products?
Blisters and sachets seem to be the most sold products.

Who are the customers?
Huge laboratories, like Roche, Bayer, Aventis… the fact that the customers are laboratories leads Alcan to have very strict rules concerning the work patterns, beacause there will be some medications in the packaging delivered by the firm…

How does it works?
Alcan (through my beloved coach for exemple) negociate , most of the time with national or continental units of the laboratories, contracts over five or six years with a steady quantity of production and steady prices. Of course, most of the time negociations do not deal with only one product but on all the products that unit needs. And that is the funny part of the job…it is like a game! But you are playing with millions dollars (baby…).

I think that is enough for you, you already had a great patience to read all this. I must tell taht I had really a great time with my coach discovering his activities… even if the restaurant was one of the best part of the day!

WHO AM I?

Pretty hard question to answer...

My name is Barret, Thomas Barret. As you can see I am pretty french, with such a name it is hard to pretend the opposite...

So I am french... it does mean that I like cheese, wine and bread. It is true too that I like soccer, that I speek bad english, that I do not like anything else than my country, that I do not have elctricity in my house and that I never wash myself...like every average french guy. In fact these last facts are not really true, except concerning soccer (come onnnnnnnnnnn Zizou!...what, he is no more playing for France?). These are the first things to know about me.

Except screaming for a ball with lots of other stupid guys, I like playing other games with smaller balls, like tennis (12 years of this funny sport!), billiard or golf (just when I have to sign a contract with my partners...). Last but not least, I love surfing since someone told me it was an easy way to get girls and money, and the more you were lazy the more you would success... perfect for me!

But who better then my friends would be able to describe me? I asked them to do so but...that would probably give you a bad image of me (I have to brand myself!). That is the problem, I like my friends but they do not like me (at least when I do not have money)... if you have any solution, e-mail me please.

Nevertheless, I suceeded in stealing a picture of them, so you can see there ugly faces. I spent most of my time (12 hours a day, 8 days a week, during five months) with them last year because I was part of a student board list (BANZAI). That was an incredible time for me (even if we lost...) and this was a striking moment of my life, no doubt about that.

That is it for what I allow you to know about me, if you want to know more it is pretty cheap, 1€ per question (send it to Alcan, I have a partnership with them), every question is welcome!

Tomaziiiino

PS: Bonus, just for you; I am student in l'ESSEC, a french business school (one of the best, of course...), I am 21 and I live in the suburbs of Paris, the most beautiful city in the world, as everyone knows...

My Alcan Day

Please follow that link to know about my Alcan Day