Following its merger with Bombardier Transportation, Alstom used Celonis to streamline its processes and harmonize their system landscape. In Inventory Management, they’ve already unlocked substantial savings and shortened their time to profitability.
Since 1928 Alstom has consistently laid the track to success for rail transport globally. With approximately 75,000 employees in 2024, the company generated revenue of €15.5 billion in 2023. Specializing in the building and maintenance of diverse rail transport solutions, Alstom is renowned for its high-speed trains like the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse – "high speed train" in English) and AGV (High Speed Railcar), its metro systems, light rail vehicles, locomotives, and regional trains. In 2021, Alstom acquired Bombardier Transport. This strategic move enabled the French company to significantly expand its international presence and enhance its range of rail solutions.
“With this acquisition, Alstom has doubled in size,” explains Alexandre Domingues, Chief Digital Services Officer. “To accelerate the integration of the two groups without compromising their efficiency, it was essential to establish uniform and consistent processes across the organization.”
Harmonizing data and systems after merger
To address these major new challenges of streamlining and standardizing its processes, Alstom needed to implement a secure migration tailored to the newly acquired sites following the merger – all to ensure a smooth, efficient transition. Up against rigid and siloed systems, excessive inventories, and a lack of visibility of their supply chain and transport costs, Alstom launched a co-innovation program with Celonis. Its goals: centralize information, harmonize tools, and improve overall transparency. And Alstom is right on track to achieve all this and more. Leveraging Celonis’ Process Intelligence platform, with its market-leading process mining technology at its core, Supply Chain teams can now track the availability of spare parts in real time, ultimately enabling better management of inventory and key components essential for building trains. “Bombardier used nine or ten different ERP systems, while Alstom used only one," explains Domingues. “There were also two different coding systems for parts, even when they came from the same supplier. Celonis has contributed to the harmonization of data and systems.”
“When I discovered that I could automatically map entire value chains, there was definitely a wow effect!”
Alexandre Domingues, Chief Digital Services Officer, Alstom
“As the head of continuous improvement and IT systems for the group, I sought partners with proven use cases and strong integration within the ERP ecosystem,” Dominguez adds. “Celonis quickly established itself as the obvious choice.”
Alstom has since successfully unified its various SAP systems into one. Using Celonis, the company was able to standardize and streamline its operations, marking a significant step forward in optimizing its workflows.
Massive working capital benefits in Inventory Management
Inventory Management represents a crucial challenge for Alstom's industrial activity. With Celonis' Inventory Management Apps, the company quickly optimized its working capital. Now, Alstom has increased visibility of its inventory and can plan more efficiently. This initiative has significantly improved time to profitability. “Before, we had to look in our ERP system site by site to check the availability of a part,” says Alexandre Domingues. “The advantage of process mining is that it allows us to automate this process by providing real-time information.” A centralized group of around ten people, split between Paris and Bangalore, forms a center of excellence dedicated to integrating process mining into Alstom's internal processes. These experts work closely with the Celonis team to develop and implement specific use cases. “With the ability to monitor all our inventory and reorganize it, we achieved significant optimization, generating substantial savings that were reinvested in other projects,” says Domingues.
Next on Alstom’s list: Unlocking the full potential of AI
In the near future, the Chief Digital Services Officer envisions analyzing the fluidity of processes with Celonis, particularly in the field of engineering.
“I firmly believe process mining will help us boost our On-time-delivery, a crucial competitive edge in an industrial process like ours.”
Alexandre Domingues, Chief Digital Services Officer, Alstom
And he is looking into deploying Celonis’ more advanced process intelligence solutions, with a special focus on AI. “If each use case is precisely contextualized, artificial intelligence will be a valuable asset for process mining tailored to the most complex scenarios,” adds Domingues.
