Accustomed to restructuring, the author explains why LEAN, an innovative management method, must occupy an essential place in state land-based industrial maintenance. This way of being and thinking, applied today in all industries, is essential today to remain competitive, efficient and adapted to the needs of the forces.

LEAN, a recent term that appeared in the 1990s and derived from the business techniques of the TPS, has become common and increasingly applied in modern industry. Initially essentially oriented towards production logic, this method, which is meant to be a way of being, today affects all areas of the company, from the smallest service company to the largest multi-functional groups, from engineering to marketing. Relying on a human logic oriented towards the customer and based on the continuous improvement of all the elements of a Supply chain, the implementation of LEAN is often the only possible alternative available to a company to remain competitive in an increasingly competitive context. Accustomed to overhauls and restructurings, the terrestrial MCO) must constantly adapt to meet operational requirements and remain efficient at lower cost. Already adopted by the majority of the defence industry, LEAN should find its place in the principles and tools of a modernised land-based MCO.

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Need to always adapt with the allocated means

In the general conclusion of its 2004 public report on the MCO of military equipment, the Court of Auditors noted the fall in availability since the end of the 1990s. The causes identified at the time were a relative decrease in the budgetary effort devoted to the land-based MCO (MCO-T), and governance problems specific to the Ministry of Defence.

Today, despite the increase in expenditure allocated to the MCO, the results obtained in terms of the technical availability of equipment remain insufficient in relation to operational requirements. Moreover, the continued growth in MCO spending may not be sustainable given the resource provided for in the 2014-2019 MPL.

As a result, a fleet of heterogeneous, sometimes ageing equipment, subject to multiple regulatory constraints and intense operational commitment is difficult and costly to maintain. The land-based equipment, which is in high demand, is widely dispersed throughout the country, which complicates logistics flows and increases fixed costs.

The productivity of the State structures that intervene to maintain them is still capable of progress. To ensure the sustainability of the MCO policy within the framework of the budgetary trajectory set by the 2014-2019 LPM, the State has three levers: improving its internal performance, improving its performance as a buyer and rationalising its equipment fleets. It is therefore appropriate to focus on the first two. To do this, the Court of Auditors then recommends operating by acting mainly in six areas, including that of reorganising the production and storage tool of the Ministry of Defence.

The organisation of the maintenance of land equipment in operational condition

Interviewing is an act of combat, as we used to learn...

"The pace of today's commitments, the commissioning of technologically advanced equipment, and constraints of all kinds keep this maxim alive today. But the organisation of this "maintenance" has changed profoundly. Indeed, among all the large-scale reforms carried out by the defence and the Army in particular, the maintenance of land equipment is one of the most ambitious and reforming".

Since 2008, the land-based MCO has undergone its biggest overhaul since the Second World War. In order to be ever more responsive and efficient, its reorganisation aims to obtain a system that is better adapted to the needs. Thus, under the responsibility of the EMA, the responsibilities of project management (MoA), delegated project management (MoAd) and project management (MoE) have been decoupled.

• The project owners (staffs and service departments) express the following needs
• The delegated project owners (SIMMT ) provide the capacity to manage the ...
• The operational project managers ensure the level of availability requested by the command by carrying out immediate maintenance.
• Industrial prime contractors (SMITer and private industry) generate potential through the use of deferred maintenance. Their action directly concerns the ability of fleets and equipment to meet the employment planning expressed through operational contracts.

In-service support for land-based equipment

In-service support for equipment covers all phases of the equipment life cycle. It represents a significant part of the overall cost of equipment and can cover important economic and technological issues.

The relevance of this complex and specific organisation is based on the complementarity of all its components, which are both inseparable and indispensable.

In addition, in order to respond efficiently to the overall need, project management may be entrusted to state entities (SMITer, local support), but also to private law industrialists. From this point of view, a permanent balance must be respected between the different solutions, and a seamless complementarity between the two players must be sought in order to optimise performance linked to their respective specificities.

The MCO of land-based equipment: a complex specific supply chain

As part of its organizational redesign, the MCO-T is already in the LEAN spirit with the management of various "worksites" initiated by specific Supply Chain projects under the responsibility of SMITer, whose results are already beginning to be measured.

Historically, logistics has traditionally represented the activity from the provision of finished products by the factory or trader to delivery to the customer. Now, the SCM concept optimally manages all flows (IT, physical and financial) as well as the interfaces between the various players (producer, supplier, customer) for the entire product life cycle (from design to end of life, or even reuse). It must therefore integrate all activities associated with the flow and transformation of goods from the primary supplier to the end customer, as well as the associated information flows. Combining productivity, quality and efficiency, the supply chain is present at all levels, whether operational to manage physical flows, tactical to define organizations and direct flows in the medium term, or strategic to anticipate long-term actions. It is an approach that aims to ensure the management and synchronisation of all processes to meet the expectations of end customers.

To sum up, the Supply chain is the right product, in the right place, at the right time, at the right price, in the right quantity and at the required quality level .

From an organisational point of view, if the phases of anticipating needs and acquiring resources are in the hands of delegated project management (SIMMT), flow management is the raison d'être of SMITer, state project management of land-based MCO.
As the head of the military supply chain, SMITer manages the physical flow of spare parts both in terms of push flows (anticipating requirements) and pull flows (responsiveness) throughout the territory and within theatres of operation, for the benefit of all armies and joint services. This dichotomy of flows implies a fine management of the stock, distributed over the territory according to precise criteria (frequency of distribution, unit price, sensitivity, etc.).

Thus, in the light of the industrial era, the SMITer, which consisted of eight central warehouses (CW), was set up in the early 1970s.holding the most critical spare parts and 22 CDRs allowing the distribution of these spare parts on a finer zonal grid, will tighten its system around four ECs, six CDRs and a site dedicated to "reverse logistics".

This organisation, aligned with the carrier's PFIAs (CTTS), will thus make it possible to tighten physical flows and reduce delays with increasingly limited resources.

Steering and performance: in order to meet the requirements of the supply chain, SMITer is based on a process approach to its organisation, which it steers using the logistics operator dashboard. Built and certified according to the requirements of the ISO 9001 standard in 2008, the logistics operator function is found in the R3 process of the SMITer mapping.

Supply chain issues are fundamental since in 2014 SMITer, as the logistics operator of the MCO-T, distributed 12 million spare parts, 47% of which went to armies and joint services and 12% to OPEX and forces stationed overseas and abroad. With a rate of "service on time", understanding a performance of 96% for orders placed in immediate emergency, the whole challenge of this (r)evolution is to coordinate the players and ensure their interfacing in order to obtain an end-to-end logic and a performance carried by all for the benefit of all.

Defence, a cutting-edge industry subject to changes in national budgets, looking for a second wind in exports, MCO and services

If defence budgets are maintained at world level, there is a decline in the spending of European nations, offset by rising spending in the BRICS and the Middle East. Exports are becoming an unavoidable imperative for defence industry companies.

In order to maintain their technological level and turnover, companies in the sector must in particular

- improve their service offerings and optimise the MCO chain. Military interventions and the desire to save money focus on the optimization of MCO operations to reduce costs and improve the capacity to use equipment;
- organise internally to support and service "mature programmes", resulting from the life extension of existing equipment and not replaced such as ATL2;
- develop, control and optimize industrial models, the supply chain and the traditional purchasing strategy in the face of all competitors in this global market.

They therefore partly need to:
- define the implementation and evolution of operational organisations to anticipate or face situations of growth, harmonisation of operating methods and opening up to partnerships;
- improve purchasing and optimize the upstream supply chain (sourcing and offset strategies, supplier performance control, reduction of component stocks, implementation of VMI and, more generally, procurement performance);
- developing supply chain planning (demand, capacity and inventory planning);
- improve industrial performance and LEAN management (reduction and reliability of cycles, cost reduction);
- maintain in operational condition (maintenance flow forecasting/planning, prioritization of work-in-process processing, flywheel optimization);
- optimising the distribution of spare parts (sourcing and distribution network, stock policy).

What is LEAN management?

LEAN manufacturing
- LEAN is based on the human factor and the elimination of waste in the processes (for example: too many trips, too much stock of finished products, too much production waste, over quality ...);
- LEAN does not aim at reducing the number of employees, on the contrary;
- LEAN aims at increasing production capacity by reducing costs and cycle time, and by optimising flows;
- LEAN is based on an understanding of customer needs.

LEAN thinking
While LEAN is certainly a set of tools to achieve operational excellence, LEAN thinking is a strategy and a mindset to adopt. Every operator in an organisation becomes a contributor to the objective to be achieved (which is already the case in the armed forces), and the positions of highest responsibility must all aim to be support functions for those who "create the added value of the company". Accepted by all and at all levels of hierarchy, it will allow:
- quantify the value of the product from the customer's point of view;
- identify the value chain to highlight waste;
- create a flow to reduce lot size and work in process (WIP );
- produce only what the customer has ordered;
- constantly strive for perfection by improving quality and eliminating waste.

The LEAN goals in numbers:
- the development time for a new product can be halved;
- the investment in machines and tools is often halved;
- the effort hours of direct and indirect employees are usually halved;
- quality is improved: the defect rate on finished products is at least halved;
- the working area for the same production is halved;
- WIP is reduced by at least a factor of ten;
- batch size is reduced, stocks are reduced: materials, work-in-process, finished products;
- capacity and speed increase with the flow, lead times are reduced;
- the ergonomics of workstations are improved.
In a very short period of time, there has been a significant improvement in employee participation, involvement and morale, and fewer sick days, injuries and absenteeism.

In the defence industry, LEAN already has a prominent place.

There are many examples of projects which demonstrate, by the interest they have aroused and the results already achieved, that LEAN is an effective continuous improvement logic when it is seriously conducted, safe and sustainable.
LEAN management is now present in all the production lines of the defence industry, certainly on a more or less large scale, but also at RTD, Thalès, Nexter, etc., and in the defence industry.

We also note that LEAN, commonly used in management and manufacturing, is gradually spreading to all parts of the company. Thus, these large groups have now extended the scope of LEAN to areas such as engineering, a more recent strategy aimed at reducing iterations when designing equipment by focusing on known good practices and using past mistakes. Initially considered abstract, these visions of LEAN have, by involving fewer stakeholders than for LEAN manufacturing, already proven their effectiveness.

In increasingly close relations with these private industrialists, most of whom are involved in the defence sector, which is only part of their range of activities, state project managers must constantly remain competitive in order to survive. Indeed, even if their operational specificities place them among the indispensable elements within our armies, it is no less certain that the environment in which they operate is changing.economic environment generates an inevitable comparison often leading to economic choices based on the notion of "lowest bidder" in the award or review of support contracts.

The new operational and economic imperatives once again call for an overhaul which generates choices in the organisation of the maintenance of land equipment in operational condition. As for the defence industry, the implementation of LEAN management within the French Army's state-owned prime contractors (SMITer) is a way forward that has become essential to improve efficiency and performance. "Let's dare to make LEAN possible" by putting people even more at the forefront, and let's innovate by taking advantage of everyone's assets.

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A graduate of the École militaire interarmes, promotion "Général de Lanlay" 2003-2005, Captain (TA) Gilles HYVERNAULT has 18 years of service, 16 of which were spent maintaining the land equipment of the French Army in operational condition. In particular, he commanded a projectable maintenance company in Poitiers, an elementary unit belonging successively to the 9th BMAT and then to the 2nd RMAT. After passing the technical diploma in engineering sciences, he is currently studying for a specialized master's degree in LEAN: production and logistics at ENSAM ParisTech , with an industrial mission in Buc at General Electrics Healthcare .

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1] Maintenance in operational condition

2] Originally from Japan, LEAN, which can be translated as "lean" or "defatted", is a management method implemented after 1945 by Toyota MC which aims to achieve performance through the continuous improvement of processes or organizations by reducing waste to a minimum. These practices propose a systemic approach to improving performance through problem-solving training at all hierarchical levels.

3] Toyota Production System

4] Commonly referred to as logistics, the supply chain represents the coordinated sequence of all the components of a company, from the manufacturer of raw materials to the customer.

5] Military Programming Act

6] Source: General conclusion of the Court of Auditors' public report on the OCM of military equipment of September 2014.

7] Source: 2014, by Colonel M. Deroux (Pensées militaires, 214201).

8] Military Staff

9] Integrated structure for the maintenance of land equipment

10] Land-based industrial maintenance service

[11] 2014, by Colonel M. Deroux (Military Thoughts, 214201)

12] Source: Commander J. Schimeck, EM SMITer/DivProd/CBLog

13] Supply chain management

14] Regional Distribution Centres

15] Return logistics

16] Joint Platforms

[17] Surface Transport and Transit Centre

18] Source: Argon consulting

19] Brazil, Russia, India and China and South Africa.

20] An Anglo-Saxon expression used in the field of procurement to designate the action of searching, locating and evaluating an ad hoc supplier in order to meet an identified need (for goods or services) formulated by a company or by a department or service of that company.

21] Offsets are non-standard contracts that require some form of economic activity to be transferred from the seller to the buyer's government as a condition for the sale of goods and/or services in public procurement. Offsets concern trade in public procurement of high technology goods (defence, energy, aeronautics, transport, etc.). It generally applies to contracts above EUR 10 million.

22] VMI: vendor managed inventory

23] WIP: work in process

24] Renault Trucks Defense

25] Squadron leader M. Delavernhe, Cahiers du CESAT N°39.