Continuing education at KEDGE: "An indisputable source of development opportunities" per this graduate.

Jean-Christophe Massias, a 2020 graduate of KEDGE’s ISLI Continuing Education programme, gives us an overview of his career, his training at KEDGE, and what the course has allowed him to achieve. An inspiring career path that has resulted from getting perspective through additional training.

Hello Jean-Christophe. Thank you for agreeing to speak to me. Would you tell us about the position you held before doing this continuing education course at KEDGE and what that job entailed?

Johnson & Johnson is a multinational company, with 65,000 employees, and contributes to improving the lives of more than one billion people worldwide. So it has a complex supply chain with hundreds of production sites and distribution centres.

My job was twofold. First, I was in charge of developing our "operating system" that outlined the operational processes of the supply chain that were needed to satisfy our customers and to guarantee the growth and profitability of the company. Secondly, I was in charge of implementing said processes to improve the efficiency of the supply chain. Those performance improvement tasks required my diagnosing the efficiency of complete value streams - every step from customer order-taking to delivery, including managing supply, production, transport, storage, and all planning operations.

In 2019, you decide to go back to school and attended KEDGE Business School’s ISLI (Global Supply Chain) continuing education programme. What was behind your decision?

By doing the ISLI Global Supply Chain continuing education course, my clear goal to connect the knowledge I acquired in the field to the fundamentals of supply chain management. Until 2016, my career was primarily oriented towards production. I worked on improving factory performance by first implementing a production system based on the classic lean manufacturing approach. But optimising production is not enough to make a supply chain efficient, therefore my responsibilities evolved and took me beyond the walls of our manufacturing plants to regional planning departments, distribution centres, and both customer and supplier locations. 

My experience as a plant manager gave me the ability to detect process failures and to eliminate obstacles to run a successful supply chain, through making good judgements and having an unfailing focus on facts. But I felt that I needed to boost my knowledge by getting a refresher of the fundamentals of supply chain management. In order to be able to convince those I worked with at each link in the chain, I had to use their lingo and know their references! I mainly did the programme to learn them. 

I was also looking for a degree programme for the longer term so that I would have academic recognition of my skills and knowledge, thus giving me a wider range of career development opportunities.

What direct benefits do you feel you have gained from taking this training?

I’ve already seen direct results in several situations, such as during a work session regarding the reduction of security stocks in which my colleagues and I discussed various forecasting options to improve reliability, as well as in a meeting where the need to improve agility was linked to the VUCA environment we were using. Before I took these continuing education courses, my contribution to such conversations would have been completely different because the references used were either unknown or vague to me.

In a more recent example, I started working on a connection of product lifecycle management processes with the IBP cycle that is being implemented in the company. Without the additional training, I would never have enthusiastically embarked on this project because I wouldn’t have seen the importance of it, nor would I have seen how this connection was crucial to supply chain management. Without that understanding, my company would probably have wasted months, or even years, trying to find effective gateways between the two processes.

"My job and network have been enriched and the coherence of our operating system has become even more evident to me. In a company like mine, which is complex because of its size, the ability to understand and establish interactions is undeniably a source of opportunity for advancement.”

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How did your courses go? What are the two main experiences/memories that have stuck with you? With hindsight, would you do it again?

Given the pandemic and the resulting policies implemented, the training went well. Fortunately, our programme started before the first containment measures were taken so our class got the chance to get to know and appreciate each other during the first five months of the programme. As a result, the courses and the distance sessions went smoothly and we didn’t suffer too much when we moved from face-to-face classes to distance work.

"I don't know if every ISLI programme is the same, but our class was incredible. We really had an experience of solidarity made of mutual enrichment, benevolence, self-help, laughter, as well as a bit of a rant at times.”

I say we worked in solidarity because, even though we weren't always in sync, everyone always did their best to keep our class united while respecting the physical distance. In the end, everyone benefitted.

I think that the strength of our group was established from the first weeks of the course, especially during a session where each of us had to bring an object that held importance to us. In this kind of exercise, you can either remain superficial and talk about things like your chocolate addiction, basically keep hidden what really drives you, or you can take the risk of exposing yourself to people who are still strangers. Most of us chose the second option, to show what really matters to us and what makes us who we are - all our pain, passions, failures, successes, questions, principles, and dreams. I believe that this confidence given at the beginning of our curriculum was what allowed our class to become what it was.

One of the best experiences was an exercise in creating a strategy of a company of which we barely knew the name of in order to conquer the Russian market. Each member of the team took up the challenge - our research and thoughts were perfectly complementary - to reach a proposal. It turned out to the exact strategy that the company had implemented a few years earlier. That kind of success, the kind that is the result of hard work and remarkable team spirit – is very satisfying, and left me with excellent personal memories.

I would do it again without a doubt. It gave me exactly what I expected in terms of knowledge, and much more than what I expected in terms of personal relationships. 

The business environment is increasingly changing and requires a constant effort to acquire and update one’s knowledge and skills. Which type of profile would you recommend receiving continuing education at KEDGE?

One of my mentors told me that "One day without improving your skills is a lost day". That statement still resonates with me, and I think it is even truer today. The supply chain industry is moving towards digitalisation and everything is going to change in the coming years with an immeasurable mass of data being managed in the real-time.

"The training offered by KEDGE in its ISLI continuing ed programme is for anyone who wants to stay in the game."

Expectations vary according to the person, but I think that anyone would find it beneficial because the programme covers supply chain management as a whole. However, it is a generalist one and won’t make participants experts of every aspect of the supply chain industry.

Each ISLI module lets you learn a new aspect of supply chain management- from planning to inventory management, and transport management and sales and operational planning. Anyone, depending upon the position he or she holds, can find inspiration to improve their department's performance, consolidate their results, and put themselves in a position to be promoted. In addition, for most participants, the training provides an overview of the supply chain and a better insight into the interactions between its different links. Because having a diploma and a more global understanding of a supply chain, I think it’s a given that participants will have a case for applying to a higher position in his or her field of expertise, or a position that has a broader scope of responsibilities.

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