Gebo Cermex recognised for Industry 4.0 initiatives

Gebo Cermex has received the official mark 'Vitrine Industrie du Futur', awarded by L’Alliance Industrie Du Futur (AIF) in recognition of its efforts to introduce, develop and implement Industry 4.0 initiatives at its plant in Saint Laurent sur Sèvre, France.

This mark is awarded by AIF to companies that implement new tools such as digital data exchange and advanced robotics to drive the transformation of business models and organisations as well as design and marketing methods.

The award recognises the contribution made by Gebo Cermex’s Virtual Commissioning project. Key achievements included a 20–30% decrease in lead times and production costs; a long-term approach towards zero defects, dramatically improving quality and accuracy; and increased reliability, due to the ability to show customers, in advance, details about the performance of their equipment.

Gebo Cermex Vice President Operations Christian Bock said: “A typical commissioning phase, when new equipment has to be physically assembled and tested in a workshop, takes approx. 200 hours — with 46% spent in problem-solving activities and 54% covering testing and tuning. The real innovation of our Virtual Commissioning project is that we are able to dramatically decrease the time and costs involved, while anticipating the challenges the equipment might face when installed in the actual production environment.”