Bringing a deeper commercial view into the supply chain group has not been the only cultural shift that Francesca Gamboni is promoting across her teams; in renewing its contract with Gefco as its primary provider, she wants to strengthen the spirit of cooperation with the provider and other suppliers, while encouraging broader collaboration in the automotive supply chain.

When PSA sold the majority of its shares in Gefco (it still owns 25%) to Russian Railways in 2012, it signed a commercial contract with the provider for the first time, which included a five-year exclusivity clause. In signing a new contract, Gamboni says that the carmaker considered all options, including working with multiple providers and switching to a more commodity focused, lane-by-lane approach to sourcing logistics, as she has seen at other manufacturers…