Article from Stratégies Logistique : "Viaposte : a key player in the industrial maintenance market !"
06/09/2021
Interview with Martial Martin, Director of Maintenance Operations at Viaposte.
Launched three years ago, Viaposte's industrial maintenance activity has since experienced exceptional growth with a threefold increase in turnover ! Proof if it were needed of the interest in this expertise created by and for logistics. Interview with Martial Martin, Director of Maintenance Operations at Viaposte.
How did the desire to create a logistics equipment maintenance business at Viaposte come about and what challenges did it address ?
Until now, we subcontracted our maintenance operations, often with intervention times that could jeopardise our logistics activity, as well as a lack of communication between the logistics teams and the maintenance workers, leaving little room for optimisation. All this, in a context where we were also starting to design customised industrial equipment for ourselves and our customers. We therefore decided to create our own maintenance activity dedicated to logistics, first for our own internal needs, then for the benefit of our first external customers and our parent company La Poste. And it was a great success !
Today, we have 8 teams based on Viaposte platforms, 6 more combined with logistics activities carried out by Viaposte on customer sites and 13 other teams integrated on customer sites alone. In three years, we have increased our maintenance workforce sevenfold.
This acquisition of know-how has given rise to a global offer. Can you tell us more about it ?
Indeed, we are officially launching our V-MAINTENANCE offer externally. It enables us to offer our customers several types of service throughout France and even internationally: a team posted permanently, a partial presence service or even customised intervention. To date, we maintain more than 140 multi-brand industrial facilities (sorters, order preparation solutions, conveyor systems, bagging machines, AGVs, OCR and video coding systems, etc.). We thus benefit from recognised expertise in almost all existing logistics systems with, each time, a range of adapted solutions (preventive and corrective maintenance, method and spare parts management).
Finally, our presence throughout the country also works in our favour. This is why, logically, the next step is to win over more external customers. We have everything we need to achieve our goal: experience, skills, tools; the agility of an SME with the strength of a large group behind it !
Your experience speaks for itself. A turnover that has more than tripled in less than 3 years, a workforce that has multiplied by 7, what more can you say ?
Our maintenance teams can be involved from the design stage of a logistics project, bringing their technical experience and allowing maintenance costs to be included in the calculation of the acquisition cost of an industrial solution. By integrating our technicians from the start, we can also ensure a thorough knowledge of the solution and a professional relationship with the manufacturer's and logistics operation's teams.
Viaposte also has the strength to be able to offer maintenance combined with other logistics and transport services, since these two activities are also part of its know-how.
