Factory of the Future : PSA Group Relying on ELCIMAÏ’s Expertise for Its Research Program
Advances in technology and changing customer expectations, combined with market pressures, are driving the pursuit of continuous optimization of industrial processes. For the French automotive group PSA, Europe’s second-largest automaker, improving the performance of its supply chain and manufacturing facilities is an absolute imperative for reducing costs and offering innovative, high-quality vehicles delivered on time to as many customers as possible. In this context, the PSA Group is conducting a fundamental review of the design of its production sites, based on a vision of the factory of the future dedicated to industrial excellence.
With over 20 years of specialization in digital and real estate engineering, as well as consulting in industrial organization and operational excellence, the ELCIMAÏ Group anticipated the digital revolution and its impact on production, and offers companies analyses and solutions to help them create, optimize, or upgrade their industrial and logistics sites, in full alignment with their development strategy. It uniquely offers a comprehensive integrated engineering model that guarantees the support essential to the success of such projects.
“The factory of the future is the synthesis of recent transitions stemming from the national and European regulatory framework, in the areas of energy, digital technology, organization, and society. It is also a response—now being embraced by regions to combat deindustrialization, and by manufacturers to equip themselves with the production tools for the markets of tomorrow.”
Christophe Chauvet, Partner and Director of Development at ELCIMAÏ Réalisations, a subsidiary of the ELCIMAÏ Group.
ELCIMAÏ is betting that the factory of the future, as it envisions it, will contribute to the revitalization of French industry : flexible and therefore modular, eco-built and therefore sustainable, digital and therefore connected, while still making room for people. Within the company, a working group dedicated to Factory 4.0—composed of some of the most competent experts—is focusing its research on three themes in particular : the standardized modular factory, the concentration of flows, and the industrial corridor.
Because this concept resonates with the PSA Group’s “Excellent Factory,” the two entities have indeed chosen to join forces. The “Excellent Factory” defines the “target factory” : a factory that safeguards the health and safety of its employees, satisfies its customers, adapts quickly, is calibrated to the “exact minimum required,” respects its environment, improves more rapidly by incorporating internal and external best practices, and adopts innovations at the appropriate level of maturity for the factory of the future—all while developing employee skills.
Its primary goal is to maintain an operational momentum aimed at improving the PSA Group’s industrial performance, particularly by modernizing and consolidating its facilities.
The contribution to the PSA Group’s work on the “excellent factory” is led by Christophe Chauvet, for the real estate aspect, and by Hervé Marcastel, a specialist in indu-logistics®, with the involvement of the ELCIMAÏ Group’s Environment division, led by Stéphane Roujol.