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M E C AT H E R M
New challenges ahead According to Robert Broh, author of Managing Quality for Higher Profits, “Quality is the degree of excellence at an acceptable price and the control of variability at an acceptable cost.” This seemingly complex definition of quality is actually a perfect summary of the manufacturer's craft itself. For the industrialist, a product is ‘of quality’ if it meets demand at a reasonable price. Indeed, since perfection does not exist, quality corresponds to the satisfaction of a precise expectation that carries a value that consumers are ready to give it: its price. At the same time, the manufacturer must face a large number of variables while remaining within their technical and financial capacities to face them, if not, they run the risk of making the product fall out of its value, of its fair price. This is obvious to any industrialist who has experience. But what can you do when variability increases too much on the demand side? How to do this when the market’s versatility undermines
the very principle of industry, which is the massification of production to achieve an optimized degree of quality and cost? “A fashion that appears in a suburb of Los Angeles can, via the Internet and social networks, be a trend the next day in a European or Asian country”, notes Olivier Sergent, Mecatherm President. This creates the tension that too many industrial companies experience between marketing on the one hand and production on the other. The manufacturer, bound by their industrial logic, on the one hand, will ask for time and quantity to reach quality at the right price, as mentioned above. The marketing department, on the other hand, will recall that the market requires agility at the risk of losing market share, in terms of variety and versatility, in the context of global competition. Added to this are the demands of CSR and compliance. Not that those serious industrialists were devoid of morality, which, as we know, was not invented by the Y generation. But the requirements have increased. The environmental stakes are such that energy waste is no longer just an accounting requirement but a matter of life and death. Also, the globalization of the media and means of communication has made inhabitants of very distant countries feel compelled to participate, or at least not to slow down, the social progress of each other.
FLEXIBILITY The IBA and IBIE award-winning MTA oven is a key element in the flexibility or scalability of the lines
C O M PA N Y R E P O R T S
French company known worldwide for its automatic production lines for bakery and pastry products, Mecatherm considers its mission and implements it with its customers with concrete and reliable solutions at the cutting edge of technology, especially digital.
