Rexel supports its customers in their transition to Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0, considered to be the latest industrial revolution, is characterized primarily by factories going digital and using innovative technologies. Artificial intelligence, smart objects, augmented reality and Big Data are all part of this fundamental shift. Government initiatives, which promote these digitized factories, hope to encourage companies of all sizes to use these technologies to revive the industrial sector’s essential role in the French economy.

Industry 4.0 allows companies to move away from mass production towards a more flexible production model at no additional cost. One example is 3D printing, which has revolutionized customized manufacturing.

Big Data and the Cloud have also helped to improve the performance of smart factories thanks to their ability to store and analyze data recorded by machine sensors. This data can then be used to drive and optimize manufacturing strategies and even predict future outages. Predictive maintenance is based on the constant surveillance of machines, which is made possible by the Internet of Things. Manufacturers can predict and anticipate outages based on the collected data and thereby avoid significant losses linked to production downtime following a mechanical failure.

Grégoire Morineaux, Industrial Markets Director for Rexel France, explains the industrial market strategy of the French subsidiary, particularly in relation to digitization and energy efficiency:

What are Rexel’s strengths in the industrial market?

Our strengths are our specialization, our omnichannel approach and our technical expertise. Our industrial sector clients are in daily contact with our dedicated team of 125 specialized advisors, who understand the challenges facing their different sectors and trades. In addition to this specialist advice, our webshop has become a market reference, offering content which targets specific customers and business segments, such as maintenance or safety. Finally, our technical expertise has expanded and today, we have a team of 80 technicians who are experts in industrial processes and who are skilled not only in automated control systems, but also in industrial networks, cybersecurity, robotics, and the entire digitized industrial chain, from smart sensors to Edge or Cloud computing software solutions. All this complementary expertise is aligned with the recent trends in the digital sector.

What were your most memorable projects of the past 12 months?

We won several great projects in 2020, which included optimizing the energy efficiency of manufacturing sites, focusing mainly on replacing existing lighting with LED technology, as well as assisting our customers with their export activities by providing specialized logistics solutions, modernizing the automation of their manufacturing sites with more secure solutions, and offering repair services or preparing customized kits for them.

Our Industry 4.0 projects have been mainly in the fields of mobile robotics, network security (including cybersecurity) and the monitoring of industrial processes using Edge computing solutions or smart sensors.

I would also like to mention an interesting partnership, which was launched in 2019 with the French startup Usitab and which has enabled us to roll-out an application that digitizes all the maintenance and production processes of an industrial site. The application enables all the data collected by on-site operators for their production monitoring reports, to be instantly fed into the quality management system, enabling the real-time and remote manufacturing and maintenance surveillance of one or more sites.

How do you see the recovery of the industrial market?

The industrial market is a machine which stops and starts very slowly. The impact of lockdown was less consequential than in the building sector, but many uncertainties remain about the future. These are mainly in relation to the changes in support offered by the state and to business recovery, which will help fill the order books for 2021 and beyond. But there are also reasons to be optimistic, based on the industrial sector’s ability to transform its offer both from an environmental as well as a digital perspective. This transformation is an excellent opportunity for Rexel akin to the home improvement in the energy management of residential buildings. And we can already see that the direction that France’s recovery plan (named ‘France Relance’) is taking, namely with the decarbonization and digitization of industry, will accelerate this transformation.

Rexel has the right assets at its disposal to respond to the productivity and competitiveness challenges facing our industrial customers, which increasingly rely on the ability to be both reliable and responsive. Our priorities remain unchanged and we will continue to ramp up our offering in digital and energy efficient solutions for the industrial sector.