Flex 4.0: rethinking our factories

he Flex 4.0 project was the response to a widespread observation in industry: for a given product assembly need, each plant tends to propose a different solution, depending on its habits and its culture. According to project owner Stéphane Thiebaut, Flex 4.0 was designed to “harmonize the approach based on the most effective One Safran production and engineering practices, to meet the standards stipulated by Safran’s reference system.”
The multidisciplinary project team brought together a dozen different job fields, from production operators and technicians to change leaders, along with IT and HSE experts, plus One Safran correspondents.

STANDARDIZED… BUT ALSO MODULAR AND SCALABLE

The Flex 4.0 team came up with a standard production line that could be deployed for the assembly and integration of any type of product. Designed to adapt to the specific characteristics of each plant, the line is highly modular. It draws on an array of methodological building blocks that encompass optimized solutions for each aspect of production: workstation ergonomics, quality, tools, value chain, treatment of non-conformities, etc.

Charlotte Lefebvre, product manager at the Mantes plant, near Paris, is all in favor of this approach, as she explains: “One of the main advantages of Flex 4.0 is that it covers all facets of a production line with ready-to-use solutions, from optimizing flows by reducing displacements to making sure the line gets just the materials needed.” In other words, our plants are free to develop their own standardized line based on the building blocks offered by Flex. 4.0.

But the project’s ingenuity doesn’t stop there: it’s also scalable! You could say that Flex 4.0 is a living, breathing reference system: it’s improved continuously by a dozen authorities (Black Belts, technicians, etc.) tasked with informing the entire network when a promising improvement emerges at their own facility. Stéphane Thiebaut (see next page) is firmly convinced of its advantages: “The success of this project depends as much on the quality of the solutions offered as on the motivation of the people who will be deploying these solutions.”