Over the past decade, the supply chain function has become increasingly significant for Renault, as well as the wider Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance. At the French carmaker, it covers production control, inbound and vehicle logistics and sales and operations planning (S&OP) activities across the group’s 38 industrial sites, 13 in-house parts logistics platforms and more than 6,000 suppliers. In recent years, Renault has been investing further in the supply chain function, including updating legacy logistics and supply chain IT systems and integrating them with real-time transport and inventory data.

A key outcome of this overhaul has been to further strengthen S&OP, which Jean-François Salles, Renault Group global vice-president for supply chain, sees as the OEM’s data orchestra leader, helping the executive board to make key decisions.