Using DMAIC for Making Sustainable Supply Chain Efficient in a GRAI Environment

Abstract

The gloomy economic climate in Europe in comparison to the other continents has a hard impact on SMEs in France and Europe. The best way for resisting to globalisation negative impacts is to be more efficient at each step of their supply chain. This is the key of their competitiveness. According to COP21 conclusions, it is nowadays a necessity for enterprises to integrate in their strategy social, societal, environmental aspects in addition to cost, quality and lead time for improving themselves: they have to be sustainable. The question is how to make sustainable enterprise more efficient. Despite the other functions in the enterprise, the supply chain and its related functions are the main area of improvements. GRAI methodology is one of the three main methodologies (with PERA and CIMOSA) used for improving enterprise performance. GRAIMOD is a tool being developed for supporting GRAI methodology. The concepts defined during this elaboration could be used for making supply chains sustainable. The result of the improvement process is an efficient supply chain. DMAIC is a problem solving method used for continuous improvement and really adapted to the wanted objective: improvement of the supply chain. This chapter shows how to use this method in a GRAI environment for making sustainable supply chains more efficient. Concepts are presented and illustrated will a real example on a SMEs.