CONTEXT

Sector: Distribution
Business expertise: Human Resources Planning

OBJECTIVES
  • Automate audit mission planning for Key Account clients
  • Optimise the allocation of auditors responsible for certifications and evaluations to missions whilst respecting numerous constraints
SOLUTION
  • Formalisation of planning constraints, including implicit constraints
  • Development of a bespoke business solution integrating EURODECISION’s LP-Scheduler component
RESULTS
  • Maximisation of the number of audits planned per campaign
  • Workload smoothing over the period and balancing between auditors
  • Reduction of travel carbon footprint
A high level of expertise in decision mathematics, like that of EURODECISION, is not easily found. You very quickly sense that you’re dealing with consummate professionals who deliver quality work.
Willy LESTEVENDigital Project Manager, Digital Transformation Department, AFNOR CERTIFICATION
I really appreciated the support from EURODECISION experts, their highly personalised client approach, and their project vision. They immediately understood our needs and proposed solutions that made sense. From the very first discussions, we realised the importance of having a highly configurable tool: the solution’s flexibility enabled us to integrate all constraints, including those that had not been initially listed.
Willy LESTEVENDigital Project Manager, Digital Transformation Department, AFNOR CERTIFICATION

As France’s leading independent certification and evaluation body, AFNOR CERTIFICATION issues labels and certificates attesting to the quality of products, systems, services, and the skills of the organizations that use its services. With over 500 certification standards based on French, European, or international norms, the AFNOR Certification range is among the most comprehensive on the market, including brands such as AFAQ, NF, and the European Ecolabel.

To conduct these audits worldwide, AFNOR CERTIFICATION relies on a network of 1,800 qualified external auditors and evaluators who travel to clients’ various sites. They analyze the compliance of organizations’ management systems with voluntary standards and produce audit reports used to obtain or maintain certifications.

For Key Account clients, who must audit numerous standards and geographic sites over a given period, AFNOR CERTIFICATION organizes audits into campaigns. Planning these campaigns is particularly complex for account managers. It requires respecting audit constraints (duration, precedence, and simultaneity), auditor constraints (availability, skills, and geographic data), and site constraints (location, activities, required certifications, and opening hours).

Initially, the schedules were manually entered in Excel, and the selected schedules generally corresponded to the first eligible solution that met all criteria. But in 2020, AFNOR CERTIFICATION decided to optimise the annual planning of certain audit campaigns, which required implementing a dedicated solution.

AFNOR CERTIFICATION’s Digital Transformation Department initially looked for an off-the-shelf tool, but none met this need. The team therefore turned towards an optimisation solution more closely aligned with business requirements. The approach of EURODECISION, expert in decision mathematics and artificial intelligence, which enables advanced constraint customisation through configuration of its LP-Scheduler component, dedicated to task planning, convinced them and enabled AFNOR CERTIFICATION to launch the project.

Working sessions with business teams enabled the inventory of data from multiple sources and the formalisation and weighting of all constraints inherent to audit campaign planning. Initial automated planning tests highlighted numerous implicit constraints not initially listed (e.g., a campaign must not include a public holiday…), but EURODECISION’s iterative approach enabled their integration into the solution.

A genuine planning assistant, the EURODECISION tool enables automatic generation of a coherent schedule respecting constraints over the period. It allocates workload equitably between auditors and optimises travel according to geographical constraints, but also with carbon footprint reduction logic. Users retain the ability to manually make modifications to the solution proposed by the tool, for example when client constraints evolve, or to relax certain criteria in case of an unplanned audit.

Used for 2 years for Key Account campaign planning, AFNOR CERTIFICATION is now considering expanding its use of the tool. It has just launched planning tests by certification standard type, which would also enable multi-client campaigns to improve efficiency.

The tool has also attracted the attention of AFNOR COMPETENCES, a Group subsidiary offering a wide range of professional training, which has decided to engage EURODECISION to optimise planning of its training programmes in France.