The industry is being reconfigured under the combined effect of power electronics, software and the interconnection of systems. Its products become complex architectures, its factories digital environments, and its innovation cycles long trajectories. Guest of PerspectiveBruno Bouygues, director of GYSa company based in Laval and present in one hundred and thirty countries, describes this change: a progressive, structured transformation, which redefines the critical size, skills and place of Europe in the global industrial game.
“We have four jobs. (…) Know-how is power electronics”
At the opening, Bruno Bouygues reframes the scope: “GYS is a family business that I run with my father Nicolas. We have four professions. We manufacture welding equipment, battery chargers, induction heating machines and equipment for repairing cars. The know-how is power electronics. »
Behind these product lines, a common technological heart. The company has “two industrial facilities, one in France, one in China”, as well as “four subsidiaries in Europe”, and markets its products “through distributors in 130 countries”. The anchor is industrial, but the depth is electronic and software.
From electromechanics to software: a trajectory in three cycles
At the beginning of GYS, “our products were electromechanical products, ultimately quite simple, with motors and transformers”, then “the era of electronics arrived around twenty years ago”. Machine cores were replaced by electronic cards “with passive components, then semiconductors”.
🚨 SMARTJOBS
- ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE – Director/Deputy Director of International Relations (F/M)
- LEVELLR — Head of Sales (EMEA)
- CLAROTY — Sales Development Representative
- CURE51 — Data Scientist (Internship)
- FRACTTAL — Account manager (France)
- ONE-FIVE — Product Owner / Product Manager
- BRICKSAI — Founding Growth Manager
👉 Find all our offers on the DECODE MEDIA Jobboard
📩 Are you recruiting and want to strengthen your employer brand? Discover our partner offers
With these semiconductors, “the software has arrived. Then today, platforms, intelligence, finally, all everyday subjects have entered the factory. » Bruno Bouygues continues: “I have been managing GYS for 22 years. At the end of this quarter, we will finish a range of products and therefore this will be the third time we have completely changed our businesses. In 22 years, we will have reinvented ourselves three times. »
The automobile as a revealer of complexity
To illustrate this change, he takes the example of automobile repair: “20 years ago, in a car, you had three or four grades of steel. (…) Today you have maybe 140 grades of steel. » The repairer can no longer identify the materials alone. “So, there must be algorithms in the machines that do automatic material recognition. »
Talents and R&D: overlapping skills
The increase in complexity implies a permanent adjustment of the teams: “20 years ago, we needed mechanics. 10 years ago, from electronics engineers. Today, we need coders. But we still need mechanics and electronics engineers. Except that today we have a huge need for more coders. »
GYS has “a little less than 1,000 people” and “around 200 doctors, engineers, technicians”, a little more than half of whom are in the R&D center. This covers mechanics, mechatronics, robotics, electronics, electrical engineering and three major software departments: the heart of machines (operating systems and test tools), industrial communication (cobot, robot, industrial computer, humanoid) and PC, tablet and telephone interfaces.
Low volumes, high technology, lack of standards
What characterizes the industry is the absence of volumes from the general public. Bruno Bouygues compares: “In the office environment, everything is very controlled. The volumes are in the hundreds of millions, even billions of pieces per year. (…) When you go to the industrial world, (…) we manufacture 2,000 to 3,000 machines per day. That is to say less than half a million machines per year. »
The consequence is structural: absence of standards and fundamental ready-to-use solutions. “Large manufacturers like GYS are making the effort to develop stacks, operating systems, applications, test tools, industrial AI. You have to make everything in-house since nothing exists. »
Robotics and humanoids: a “15-20 year” horizon
On robots and humanoids, he insists: “The technologies (…) will mature in 15-20 years. » This gap creates tension with capital “rather over horizons of 5 to 10 years”. Hence the idea of a “real European project, with a European vision”, capable of supporting long cycles. The model would evolve from “a local factory to serve a global world” towards “continental factories”.
Europe: talents present, capital to consolidate
“In Europe, we have a lot of talent, so that’s not the subject. » On the other hand, he considers it necessary to “better consolidate the financial markets” and to get out of “a multitude of small global stock exchanges”. He mentions the absence of “large pension funds” capable of “irrigating major technological projects”.
He also highlights the issue of components: “Today, the last component factories are not in France. » The United States, he observes, “put a lot of money on the table for the factories to arrive”, which calls, according to him, for a European response.
Critical size and code explosion
Technological development changes the market size necessary to amortize R&D. Serving a domestic market of 50 million people was enough in the electromechanical era. With electronics and then semiconductors, we had to target 150 to 250 million. Today, with interconnected platforms, he speaks “rather of domestic markets of 300 to 400 million”.
On the scale of GYS, which generates “around 150 million euros”, Bruno Bouygues recognizes: “It’s big and it’s small at the same time. » On a welding machine, the software would have gone from around 20,000 lines of code five years ago to 1.5 million today, and could reach 5 to 7 million in five years.
“AI tends to commoditize a lot of things, but not industry”
“When I joined my father at GYS (…), going to join an industrial SME was an original choice. » Twenty-two years later, he observes: “What is quite interesting with the arrival of artificial intelligence is that it tends to commoditize many things, but not industry. »
He specifies: “The industry is creating more and more incremental value since we do not use AI or very little except in offices, we will instead develop expert systems. » And concludes: “Modern production floors are the new playgrounds for today’s engineers. »
Towards an “industrial OS”?
In conclusion, Bruno Bouygues mentions the continued development of “industrial platforms” to better serve customers, and “perhaps, tomorrow, offer them to other manufacturers”. He cites the example of Dassault. The hypothesis summarizes the issue: the industry is becoming one of the most demanding areas for software, and a common architecture remains to be built.
