A new French revolution?

A spirit of optimism has pervaded the French economy since the election of Emmanuel Macron as President of France in May 2017. The new president has made Industry 4.0, known in France as "Industrie du Futur", a priority. Festo E.U.R.L., the French subsidiary of Festo, has the right solutions for supporting its customers in the machine building and plant engineering sectors – now also with the Festo Motion Terminal, the revolution in automation technology.

This year, Festo France is celebrating its 60th anniversary. In 1957, Festo opened its second foreign subsidiary after Festo Italy in Sarreguemines, just on the other side of the German/French border at Saarbrücken. As a result, France's industry sector was able to access automation technology much more quickly and easily. Today, Festo is a clear market leader in pneumatic and electric automation technology in France.

Strong demand for automation

It was the time of the economic miracle in Western Europe. Demand for pneumatic automation technology in France was growing at a similar rate to that in Germany, so that Festo had to relocate its activities in 1972 to the Paris region, the political and economic centre of France. Thirty years later, in 2002, the company moved into its current premises at Bry-sur-Marne on the eastern suburbs of the French capital. This office complex with its expansive glass panels bears the unmistakable signature of Festo's corporate design. It looks like a small version of the technology centre at Festo's corporate head office in Esslingen, Germany.

In line with the "think global – act local" approach, Festo France is successfully using Festo's corporate strategy to suit the French market. "We too are following Festo's hybrid strategy: on the one hand, we are expanding our volume business with attractively priced, quickly available products from our Stars in Automation core product range, while on the other, we are pressing ahead with innovations such as digital pneumatics with the Festo Motion Terminal," commented Jean-Michel Tasse, General Manager of Festo France.

Prestigious customers

Festo France has enjoyed robust and continuous growth for decades, which is based on being firmly rooted in the French economy. The company is an automation technology partner for many prestigious plant and machine builders and end customers in France and throughout the world, including Renault Nissan, PSA, Michelin and Valeo in the automotive industry, Danone and L’Oréal in the consumer goods industry, and Airbus in the aerospace sector. Its close links to industry associations, research establishments, and higher education institutions ensure that Festo France is able to make a decisive contribution to the digitalisation of French industry.

For the manufacturer of packaging machines Sidel, for example, Festo France's sales engineers worked together with project engineers from its head office in Germany to develop specific high-pressure blocks for blow-molding machines for PET bottles. These high-pressure blocks then evolved into standard catalogue products thanks to a large number of highly developed test methods and procedures such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and other sophisticated technologies at Festo test stands in France and Germany.

Digitalisation on the shop floor

Festo Didactic also plays an important role in France, both in basic and further automation technology training at commercial training centres, higher education institutes and vocational colleges, and in connection with Industry 4.0. For example, Festo and SAP run an 'Open Integrated Factory' at SAP's Levallois-Perret location near Paris. Using a replica of individual stations of an assembly line based on the CP Factory learning system from Festo Didactic, both companies demonstrate how the shop floor and a manufacturing execution system can be successfully linked in the age of Industry 4.0. Thanks to the networking of software and assembly lines, workpieces 'tell' the machine how they should be processed. This could be the start of a new French revolution…

www.festo.fr