Groupe PSA ‘Booster Day’: imagining disruptive innovations to drive competitiveness in the Plant of the Future

• For the fourth consecutive year, Groupe PSA organized a day dedicated to its Plant of the Future program
• 60 partners, including 25 start-ups, came together to tackle 24 challenges
• A key theme in 2019: carbon neutrality

The fourth annual Booster Day, an event dedicated to Groupe PSA’s Plant of the Future, was held today in Poissy, in the Greater Paris region. In all, 60 partners and major players in technological innovation, including suppliers, integrators, start-ups, laboratories and universities, research institutes and public organizations, came together to share their solutions to 24 challenges[1]⁽¹⁾. Their work resulted in 40 demonstrators being presented.

“Getting our industrial facilities ready by planning for the challenges of the years to come – from the energy transition to new customer expectations, digitization and internationalization – is an exciting challenge. Our teams, working in collaborative mode with partners including a large number of start-ups, are committed to finding solutions that will make us more agile and more efficient to improve workstation ergonomics, but above all to boost the competitiveness of our plants and the quality of our products,” said Yann Vincent, Groupe PSA’s Executive Vice-President, Manufacturing.

At this year’s event, carbon neutrality attracted a great amount of interest, demonstrating Groupe PSA’s strong commitment to reducing the environmental impact of its plants and logistics operations.

With Booster Day, Groupe PSA challenges industrial and digital players by inviting them to solve real-world problems that teams already face or are set to come up against in the medium term. Some solutions have already been rolled out since the start of the initiative, including:

• “Uptale” technology, now used in all of the Group’s plants. Equipped with a virtual reality headset, operators receive immersive training on their future workstation, from their first steps to working at full steam. They can easily learn the proper movements and go back over points they have not fully mastered, while immersing themselves in their work environment. The technology has been in place for nearly two years and been tested by 2,500 employees. Benefits include a better understanding of the workstation and efficiency gains.

• Real-time digitized container tracking, known as “Track & Trace”. This technology optimizes container flows between suppliers and plants, and also eliminates losses.

Examples of challenges: