Bloo Marc

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PSA PLANT: BENOIT TESSIER/REUTERS. TOKYO: KIMIMASA MAYAMA/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

senior managers and help them devise an action

plan, says Maxime Picat, PSA’s head of Europe. “We

chose one room and called it the war room,” he

says. “We said war because we wanted people to

understand that the pace of what happens inside

has to be different from normal.”

While some managers are on-site for the meet-

ing, the gathering is largely virtual, with most

employees dialing in. It’s a deliberate choice to min-

imize close contact among people in a bid to con-

tain the virus, which is rapidly taking hold across

France and the rest of Europe. Managers from

all aspects of production, including supply, pur-

chasing, and engineering, participate. Particular

emphasis is placed on those who can compile data

on where and when parts are needed.

Much of the work has focused on “deep dives”

to identify workarounds: Do suppliers have other

production sites, can parts be sourced from a dif-

ferent subcontractor, can some components be

eliminated? Carmakers in crisis “will need to find

solutions with other suppliers, and this won’t always

◀ A Citroën assembly

line in Poissy, France

○ Every weekday morning at 8, a team of

executives at French carmaker PSA Group gath-

ers in a room an hour’s drive west of Paris. Others

dial in remotely, and for the next few hours,

the team huddles to plot a path out of the mas-

sive supply-and-demand crisis caused by the new

coronavirus ripping through the global economy.

For a well-oiled machine like PSA, with its 173,000

employees, multiple brands including Peugeot,

Citroën, and Opel, and parts sourced from 6,000

suppliers around the globe, the risk of disruption is

significant. Each car is typically made up of 4,000

components delivered just in time for final assembly.

Just one missing item can have devastating conse-

quences for an entire vehicle plant, slowing or forc-

ing changes to manufacturing and output or even

grinding a complete line to a sudden halt.

So when the virus brought China’s car parts

industry to a standstill, and the seriousness of

what was happening in locked-down Hubei prov-

ince became clearer, PSA switched into crisis

mode. It settled on one location to pool together

● PSA Group

suppliers worldwide

number about

6k

bu ine s

for this?