French multinational pharmaceutical leader Sanofi has quite the storied history. Having been the first global supplier of injectable polio vaccinations, it has a long-established reputation for driving disruptive, impactful and historic change.
Against a backdrop of volatility that has come to define the modern supply chain, Diane Melul, Sanofi’s Head of Global Supply Planning, is orchestrating a transformative strategy that will enhance the company’s supply chain rigor and flexibility while maximising its capacity for delivering its vital medicines to patients.
Speaking with SupplyChain Strategy at Kinexions 2025 in Austin, Texas, Melul hails the company’s digital twin solution as a turning point in creating an interconnected and robust global supply network.
Maestro enables Sanofi to simulate its global network across millions of hypothetical scenarios. The data and insights gleaned from the system have enhanced planning, agility, and integration across its supply chain network, and significant new efficiencies have been realised. Accuracy across planning has increased substantially, while real-time insights allow for optimised inventory management. The digital twin has also highlighted pain points across the production process, enabling targeted actions that have decreased process variability and reduced lead times across the cycle.
It’s a journey
“We started our journey something like eight years ago with the demand planning implementation, which has been quite successful,” says Melul. “We have around 110 markets and we’ve been deploying across all of them. So that was the first part, and then came the supply part, which is definitely more complicated to implement.
“One of the key points we’ve been learning is that effective integration is key across processes and the wider organisation. In recent implementations we’ve been working collaboratively across the business to ease the process, and we’ve been seeing much more adoption in everything because there’s clear interconnectivity.”
A key benefit for both supply chain and the wider business is the level of preparation that Maestro affords. Not only does its simulated scenarios provide crucial guidance for planning, but also for optimised reactions to surprise situations. “We love running these simulated scenarios,” continues Melul.
“That’s one of the benefits we’re getting across our complex network. We have around 40 manufacturing sites and we’ve got them connected with the markets and all the simulations we’re running. It’s allowing us to conduct a lot of parallel processing, and the decision making-process with regards to integrated business planning (IBP) is much easier than it was before we built this interconnection between different parts of the business through Maestro.”
Agility and resilience have also benefitted, especially where forecasting is concerned. “We also have a new process that will make sure we are more agile and reactive, with full visibility of the markets. As we have mapped manufacturing and markets, we can also get a full signal of what is coming next, the alerts, and how we can react. So that’s part of what we have embedded in our processes.”
A single source of truth
A considerable benefit to all of this is the establishment of a single source of truth that’s available across the global network, fostering greater accuracy but also stronger collaboration across what had been disparate and siloed business functions. “A single source of truth is really important,” Melul explains. “We are going beyond the supply chain, too, with a single source of truth that is transmitted through to finance teams and beyond.”
This heightened alignment allows for clearer and more confident decision-making, and greater communication across the business. Melul has overseen considerable efforts to ensure this opportunity for greater interconnectivity hasn’t gone to waste. “We have created strong standards, and we have to bring people together from across teams to work as one. Whether we’re talking about marketing, planning, site planners, supply planners, they’re all in the same team. It provides opportunities to learn from each other, and they have a sense of community that helps everyone to upskill and grow. That’s a big part of what we’re seeing.”
It’s not as simple as dropping a new tool in people’s laps and expecting seamless integration, of course, and Melul speaks candidly about the importance of managing such change effectively. “It’s a journey,” she says. “We have to make sure we are helping people to learn how to play with this tool, how to get the most out of it. We have to make sure they see the benefits, how it will positively impact their work, how it’ll impact our delivery for our patients, how it’s going to make sure that, every day, every time, our patients get their product on time.
“It’s really about making the link and showing them the end-to-end value where previous tools were not really giving us this visibility. Everyone was in their own silos, delivering to the next node without knowing what’s going next, and that’s no longer the case.”
Change management
It’s vitally important to create a sense of belief amongst teams when implementing tools like Maestro. Aligning process change, roles and responsibilities across the organisation and the tool is paramount, and Melul alludes to the sense that this groundwork can break the initial inertia that can be typical of these broad technological implementations. “We need to make sure we have strong and clear standards, that’s for sure, but we also need to listen to our people and make sure everything is aligned,” she explains. “People will then adopt the tool more readily when they see the value.
“Overall, that’s the philosophy we’re trying to get to: showing them the value, the use case, how others are doing. That’s the best way to really get motivation to go above and beyond to make use of new functionalities. You then don’t have to push so much.”
The implementation is not yet complete, with Sanofi’s vaccine manufacturing sites being the final frontier. For Melul, there’s excitement in being able to bring the learnings from the implementation thus far to this final stage. “It’s a long journey, but we’ve been learning, and we are targeting a bolder approach here to make sure we put everything together in one shot across vaccine manufacturing,” she enthuses. “That’s one of the learnings: the benefit comes quicker when the nodes are implemented in full. That’s what we’re targeting for the next implementation.”
The future
While that work is on the horizon, Melul’s attention stretches further. “Beyond that, we want to start investing more in artificial intelligence. We want to make sure we take advantage of new capabilities that can make the decision-making process more agile, to optimise the parameters, to get a proposal to override the master data. How are we doing in terms of inventory? Are we really setting the right parameters? Is the system capable of proposing something more interesting that could help us move in a new direction? That’s definitely the next stage for us after this implementation is complete.”
Here Melul demonstrates a forward-thinking mentality that has become essential to supply chain leaders in these challenging times. It’s a time where agility is vital, but also where huge opportunities have opened up for supply chain professionals to take a greater hand in broader strategic direction. “There is definitely less stability,” she agrees. “If you like having challenges to face and opportunities to find new solutions every day, it’s both interesting and a way to differentiate yourself. We have to find solutions every day.
“It’s interesting because there is no stasis; there is continuous reinvention. Maestro is a tool that will support all of this, but it’s not the only one. If we have everything in terms of process and tools working well, we can spend more time on being disruptive in the way we are working, we can be more disruptive in the approach and think outside of the box.
“In the last few years, with all these changes in the environment, we have learned how to be more disruptive in the way we approach the business, with positive and direct impact on the final business output: delivering for our patients. In the day-to-day, people want deliveries on time or sooner. Supply chain is making the difference, and we are playing a bigger role every day within the company. How can we make sure we deliver on those unexpected opportunities? How can the supply chain be more agile and be able to support those opportunities?
“We are seeing a real impact on business outcomes from that increased supply chain agility. I would say that the supply chain at Sanofi will continue to become more influential within the business. Sanofi’s evolution as a business means we will see the supply chain being more as an orchestrator, not only for the supply chain area, but for full end-to-end processes.”
For supply chain leaders looking to take on their own bold transformational projects, Melul’s advice is to make sure the foundations are properly laid. “First, of course, get strong master data,” she advises. “Make sure you go step by step. There will be a lot of ways to improve as you proceed. I believe that the adoption or transformation is easier when we get the time to explain where the benefits will be, and we can get simple initial plans that we can improve and enhance day after day. Our quick wins setup ensures we are prepared enough to proceed and move ahead to the next stage. The ambition can stay very high, but we need to make sure we have the step-by-step approach to work in an agile mode. And start simple, but start now!”
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