Translations

Group ADEO trains its managers on eco-social-selection

4. Environment

Green design

Sector Business / Distribution

Year 2012

Country France

Transmitter

Context

With 25 companies located in 13 countries under different brands, Groupe Adeo is the first French player in the DIY international market (2nd in Europe, 4th worldwide). Each business group is autonomous, but all have good reason to be together: sustainable development ambition is common, and the Group wants to share the progress and best practices amongst themselves on this subject. As part of its "Inventing the house of tomorrow" ambition, along with being in a rapidly changing regulatory environment, Leroy Merlin France had initiated much thought on the training of its sustainable development product managers, done in 2011 and is being adapted and dispatched to all 23 buying centers in the Adeo Group.

Objectives

- Harmonize the knowledge related sustainable development among the various purchasing groups

- Educate and train product managers (and others about the product: quality engineers, merchandisers, import managers) to take sustainable development in account:

o in the selection of suppliers

o in the selection of products (we are talking about eco-selection as much as eco-design)

o in the design of private label products

- Provide a methodology, database, and "tool box" to identify the common major impacts for their product-categories and integrate them into their selections and designs

APPROACH

- 2010: development of training in Leroy Merlin France

- March 2011: training for product managers Leroy Merlin France

- May 2011: Pilot International Training at Bricocenter Italy

- October 2011: training for product managers Leroy Merlin Brazil

- End of 2011 through 2012: rollout for all central buying groups: 84 product managers received training, which represents 33% of the ADEO Group's product managers.

Means used: team dedicated to Sustainable Development team in Leroy Merlin in France, accompanied by external actors in the development and multiplication, on-site training rather than e-learning, book preparation, concrete workshops, toolkit.

Best Practice selected by World Forum in 2011 and updated in 2012 to reflect evolution.