Industry 4.0 Interview: Stéphane Dubus, LVMH Fragrance Brands

Industry 4.0 Interview: Stéphane Dubus, Perfume Manufacturing & Fragrance Compounds Laboratory Manager at LVMH Fragrance Brands

Following the successful implementation of container geolocation at LVMH Fragrance Brands, Zozio invited Stéphane Dubus, Laboratory Manager for Perfume Manufacturing & Fragrance Compositions, to share his feedback on this fruitful collaboration.

Stéphane Dubus is a seasoned professional with an impressive career spanning more than 28 years in the industry. Joining LVMH in 1994 at the Beauvais site as a perfume preparer, he was promoted to Head of Perfume Manufacturing at the Vervins site in 1995.

In 2009, Stéphane Dubus embarked on a new venture — developing a concentrate assembly activity at the Vervins site. He changed role, becoming Laboratory Manager for Perfume and Fragrance Composition Manufacturing.

His day-to-day work is structured around a variety of tasks:

• making LVMH Fragrance Brands perfumes and fragrance concentrates available within the requested timescales and costs,

• drawing up production schedules,

• maintaining Cosmetics GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) excellence at the Vervins site for manufacturing and environmental compliance.

Towards a More Connected Factory

To best serve these objectives and achieve greater performance, Stéphane Dubus is counting on the transformation and simplification of processes at the heart of the factory through digitalisation: “Our objective within the LVMH group and the Fragrance Brands division is to move towards a 4.0 factory and push dematerialisation to its maximum,” he states.

The deployment of the logistics management and optimisation solution created by Zozio enables LVMH Fragrance Brands to track fixed and mobile assets in real time within the factory. And implementation was swift:

“We drew up a specification in collaboration with Zozio. To do so, we discussed our operating methods and considered every possible situation (mobile tank flow management, indoor and outdoor geolocation, periodic regulatory re-inspection management…).” The Fragrance Brands division is responsible in particular for managing a fleet of 100 mobile tanks.

Once the legal and security aspects had been validated and after a few tests, the ROBIN solution published by Zozio was deployed and tags were installed on all tanks.

“Zozio has significantly enabled us to digitalise and automate the management of our mobile tanks. It is a real-time, collaborative platform. We know where the tanks are, including when they are on trucks in transit, whilst remaining certain of their regulatory compliance. Working conditions improve significantly as we reduce the mental load on teams,” says Stéphane Dubus.

Container traceability and information reporting give Stéphane Dubus a comprehensive overview of tank saturation rates, usage rates, potential savings and investment priorities. The competitive advantage? “Being able to work in real time meets market expectations. We need to be responsive to perform and get our fragrances to prime shelf position. This collaboration with Zozio perfectly meets our expectations in that regard,” says the laboratory manager.

LVMH Fragrance Brands will continue its collaboration with Zozio and roll out a version upgrade enabling the dematerialisation of container labels prior to dispatch, managed directly from the software. Stéphane Dubus continues: “We are exploring the possibility of managing the fixed tank fleet. The plan is to implement a predictive, real-time tank management system to ensure tank capacity and meet our sales forecast requirements going forward.”

Zozio thanks Mr Stéphane Dubus for his generous sharing of experience!