Syl­vain Lemerci­er has just been appoint­ed Pro­cure­ment Man­ag­er at ALLIANCE AUTOMOTIVE France, a posi­tion that calls for a com­bi­na­tion of skills, in sales, mar­ket­ing, inter­na­tion­al and strate­gic affairs. 

Fol­low­ing the advice of oth­er UTC grad­u­ates, Syl­vain Lemerci­er came to UTC in 1992, in the Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing major. “What pleased me imme­di­ate­ly I arrived at UTC was the semes­ter-orga­nized pro­gramme, along with a Cred­it Course (CC) pro­gres­sion to attain the diplo­ma. This meant that we were not chained to a rigid ultra-tech­ni­cal frame­work and we were invit­ed to acquire and devel­op oth­er skills. As far as I was con­cerned, this was with my sales bent. So, on top of a sol­id tech­ni­cal and sci­en­tif­ic ground­ing I was attract­ed by eco­nom­ics, lan­guages and an inter­na­tion­al vista. With all this, UTC was a per­fect choice for me” stress­es Syl­vain.

Meeting and confronting other cultures

Syl­vain was able enjoy a lot of for­eign expe­ri­ence, through a place­ment with Goodyear in Lux­em­burg, fol­lowed by a semes­ter in Cana­da at the Ecole Poly­tech­nique de Mon­tréal to study Indus­tri­al Engi­neer­ing (plus after-hours class­es at McGill Uni­ver­si­ty). To com­plete this scene, Syl­vain did his en-of-stud­ies project at Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty, Colum­bus. “By set­ting my marks rapid­ly in inter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments, I was able to be suc­cess­ful in a num­ber of things, from teach­ing to pro­fes­sion­al and even per­son­al gains”, he adds. Once he had received his UTC engi­neer­ing diplo­ma, Syl­vain set about look­ing for a “CSN” (a sci­ence ori­ent­ed nation­al ser­vice out­side France), which he did at Fau­re­cia, in Wales, UK? “The CSN at the time was the equiv­a­lent to the mod­ern VIE (inter­na­tion­al vol­un­teers for indus­try) and allowed us to work in a for­eign com­pa­ny abroad. It was a tru­ly rich expe­ri­ence, since we were pro­fes­sion­al­ly assigned to posi­tions car­ry­ing a high degree of respon­si­bil­i­ty just after our graduation.”

Mad keen on cars and purchasing

Syl­vain always had (and con­tin­ues to have) a pas­sion for cars. “[To para­phrase Astérix] I fell into it and I’m stuck with it! My career path led me to Pur­chas­ing divi­sions. At Fau­re­cia I was appoint­ed QA Man­ag­er (pro­duc­tion) with close links to the sup­pli­ers and the Pur­chas­ing Depart­ment”. In 1999, he was recruit­ed by PSA (auto­mo­biles) at their sub­sidiary com­pa­ny Sogedac – at the Pur­chas­ing Direc­torate where he became their QA Man­ag­er (Pur­chas­es). Quite rapid­ly Syl­vain rose to the posi­tion of Project man­ag­er for pro­cure­ment of raw mate­r­i­al and was then offered the posi­tion as Pur­chas­ing Team Man­ag­er, car­ry­ing the respon­si­bil­i­ty of han­dling pur­chase orders worth up to 400 Meu­ros, with over 100 sup­pli­ers round the world. “At UTC I had done a minor spe­cial­ty in eco­nom­ics and that helped me enor­mous­ly. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, UTC “pushed us” to learn how to adapt con­tin­u­ous­ly and to react to every sort of sit­u­a­tion, to take ini­tia­tives and above all “to sort things out”. What­ev­er the chal­lenge, we just had to be able to solve it”, Syl­vain adds. Oth­er func­tions such as Head of Pur­chas­ing at Autodis­tri­b­u­tion, a cen­tral­ized com­pa­ny for auto­mo­bile spare parts. This expe­ri­ence brought Syl­vain a lit­tle clos­er again to “trad­ing” aspects, con­tin­u­ing at Philips Auto­mo­tive Light­ing as their Senior Man­ag­er for a large-scale inter­nal account. “That was a very reward­ing and enrich­ing train­ing expe­ri­ence and one where I real­ly got myself involved in Sales”, he recalls. In 2015, he was offered the posi­tion of Direc­tor of Pur­chas­ing at Alliance Auto­mo­tive France, a key play­er in the field of auto­mo­bile parts dis­tri­b­u­tion and asso­ciate ser­vices through­out France and Europe. In this func­tion, Syl­vain is now respon­si­ble for all pur­chas­ing for the activ­i­ties of the Alliance Auto­mo­tive France and he plays an active role in defin­ing the inter­na­tion­al pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy of the Group.

A sector undergoing a total revolution

Nev­er dis­abused, Syl­vain has always been able to appre­ci­ate being at the cross-roads of sev­er­al arras. “You real­ly can nev­er get bored in a job like this, with an open and car­ried milieu where we han­dle loads of prod­ucts used in numer­ous, new envi­ron­ments, and that is a rich expe­ri­ence indeed! Today we hear more and more about con­nect­ed objects, new hori­zons that lead on to the dis­cov­ery and use of new technologies. Elec­tric cars and the progress we see in dri­ver­less vehi­cles, such as the Google®-car are real­ly going to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the sec­tor in the com­ing 5 to 10 years. Prod­ucts will evolve as will the play­ers in the field; we shall all have to adapt to offer a range of prod­ucts that meets the needs for parts replace­ments and that is quite a chal­lenge, believe me! Mar­ket slot merg­ers and con­cen­tra­tions and accel­er­at­ing inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion will also be strong fac­tors – so we must remain vig­i­lant if we want to be able to inte­grate the changes as ear­ly as possible.”

“Networking” with an ever-open mind

“Build­ing up a per­son­al net­work and enjoy­ing expe­ri­ences abroad is absolute­ly cap­i­tal”, insists Syl­vain. “UTC gave me all the keys for this. You learn how to make the most of the ben­e­fits, not only in terms of a career and track record, but also in terms of per­son­al devel­op­ment … we have to make the most of this ter­rif­ic chang­ing peri­od! I have kept strong links with my alma mater UTC for over 20 years now. My wife is also a UTC grad­u­ate and I have good con­tacts with my for­mer uni­ver­si­ty com­rades … indeed many are good close friends. When I began my engi­neer­ing train­ing, I knew I was going to see new hori­zons open before me and for this and more I am very grate­ful to UTC. UTC grad­u­ates are eas­i­ly rec­og­nized with their open mind and their capac­i­ty to adapt – that is the name of the game!” con­cludes Syl­vain Lemercier.

Bio-notes

1992 Admit­ted to UTC 1997 Grad­u­at­ed from UTC, majored in Mech. Eng., with the spe­cial­ties: Indus­tri­al Qual­i­ty and Reli­a­bil­i­ty, Mate­ri­als and tech­no­log­i­cal Inno­va­tion 1997 QA Man­ag­er (Pro­duc­tion) — Fau­re­cia 1999 QA Man­ag­er (for Pur­chas­es & Pro­cure­ment) — PSA 2001 Project man­ag­er for indi­rect pro­cure­ment of raw mate­r­i­al (steel) — PSA 2002 Head of the vehi­cle parts pur­chas­ing team – PSA Peu­geot Cit­roën 2005 Head of the spare parts pur­chas­ing team – PSA Peu­geot Cit­roën 2006 Coor­di­na­tion leader for the LV Pole and Syn­er­gy in Inter­na­tion­al Pur­chas­ing — Group Autodis­tri­b­u­tion 2011 Inter­na­tion­al Key Account & OEM Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Man­ag­er – PHILIPS Auto­mo­tive Light­ing 2015 Pro­cure­ment Man­ag­er – ALLIANCE AUTOMOTIVE, France