Belden's interview on BFM Business #JMLECO

Hello and welcome to 'I Love Echo', the show that gives voice to the CEO. Aurélien Fabre, hello. Hello Nicolas, Vice President of Sales for Europe, Middle East, and Africa at Belden. You're here for connectivity, mainly in industry and network infrastructure. Belden originally has a long history of selling ultra-technical cables that enable reliable and secure transmission of data, audio, and video. You operate in transportation, manufacturing, and energy production and distribution. You were telling me that Belden is everywhere but you don't know it. So when you take the train every day, when you ride the metro, when you eat a yogurt in the morning, when you have electricity at home, Belden is behind it. And then, I was saying the historical business was cables, incredible cables, but you do more than transport data. You say you now act on data acquisition and orchestration. I thought, how does a manufacturer and seller of ultra-technical cables become the right-hand arm of the company in its digital transformation? Exactly. So the idea is to do more: we do data acquisition, transmission, and orchestration, meaning we help industrial companies with data management inside the factory. Take the example of an automotive manufacturer: what matters to them is making cars. To make cars, they need to manage their data. That's where we come in. We take care of data management in their factory, and they focus on their core business of making cars. Using Belden's services means doing predictive maintenance and avoiding production stoppages and things like that. It might even make you more attractive for recruiting. Exactly. You're talking about a very advanced customer using predictive maintenance, which is the ultimate stage of Industry 4.0. We have several steps before getting there. We measure our customers' digital maturity in three stages. Predictive maintenance is truly the ultimate stage. We also need to talk about talent attractiveness. Industry in France, industry in Europe, has bad press in general. It’s seen as difficult. But through digitalization, we are attracting new talent. We call it the gamification phenomenon. We make tools attractive, we make industry more attractive. We move from paper and pencil to the tablet that young people use today. And then there's also reduced energy consumption. Today that's a real issue in Europe. To be competitive against our counterparts in Asia or the United States, we need industrial companies to reduce their energy consumption. Then you have a mantra, and I found the way you insisted on it worth highlighting: you say we must digitalize our factories more than ever. The question is not whether to digitalize the factory, but how and at what pace. It's simply non-negotiable. Exactly. Today everyone wants to digitalize their factory, but the difficulty is that people don't know where to start, have trouble measuring the return on investment, and struggle to define the different stages. I put myself in their shoes; it's logical that they find it hard to measure all these elements. That's where you come in. That's where we are present, and that's where we support them through our products. And we have a post-COVID phenomenon: reindustrialization in Europe. Reindustrialization in Europe will be effective and efficient only through digitalization. Why? Because labor costs more in Europe and will continue to cost more. So by automating our factories, we maintain competitiveness and allow this reindustrialization to actually happen. We'll take that message, Aurélien Fabre. Essentially, you're telling us that reindustrialization, which will happen with varying degrees of momentum, is only possible by digitalizing and automating our industry, by robotizing. And behind that is the myth: 'Ah, robots mean fewer jobs.' You know the story, but empirical observation shows that's false. Actually, the idea is to replace difficult tasks for operators with robots, and operators will do more interesting, higher-value tasks. We're not replacing humans; we're just making their jobs more attractive. You're starting to see reindustrialization in Europe. How? We are starting to see it, and once again, automation is a real lever, which is why we insist on it. And what's extraordinary in what you're saying is that I understand perfectly the whole service you provide, but the starting product is still Belden's cables to achieve everything you do. Exactly. Originally we started with the cable. Then through external growth, we do more for our customers. As I said at the beginning, we manage their data. Today there is a certain amount of data available in the factory. The idea is to orchestrate it and decide which one to use to enable the plant manager to make the right decisions. While working on the interview, you took me into a world I knew less: IT, information systems, training technologies. I had a rough idea of what it was about. Then you talked about OT, operational technology. That's actually all the technologies for operating machinery. Exactly, and you tell me we are making IT and OT converge. Yes, absolutely. So what are the stakes of this? The stakes are that we see IT players trying to enter the factory, and we come from the opposite direction: we come from the factory and try to work with IT partners. That's where the importance of having a real ecosystem around us is important to address these issues, knowing that the goal of OT is to produce and optimize production, while IT has a cybersecurity connotation. So the idea is to merge the two and make the factory work in an environment like we have today. OT is about robotic arms, product movement lines, very concrete things. Exactly, that's what happens inside the factory. And so these walls, this IT/OT convergence, we see it evolving. For a few years with the factory of the future, Industry 4.0, we hear about it regularly. But you're talking about the overall mindset of your work. But when you're in manufacturing, energy, or transportation, the challenges aren't exactly the same. Can you adapt to each? The challenge remains the same: data management. In a difficult environment. A train moves and vibrates; in a factory, there's movement; in energy, we have data access issues to ensure energy continuity. You wouldn't accept losing electricity at home from one minute to the next. Aurélien Fabre, Belden is Great Place to Work certified. We can see what that means. What earned you this distinction? It didn't happen by chance; there must have been a specific management strategy. Exactly. Great Place to Work was relatively important for us. It's something we launched at the European level and globally. We are certifying the company at the European level. The idea is to attract new talent. We have a very dynamic team in France with 25 employees, and the idea is to bring in more. We have several job opportunities. In terms of work organization and work-life balance? Yes. Belden is very committed to communities. The idea is to give back to the community what the community gives us. By community, we mean associations: making donations, we have one week per year blocked for that, we also have the possibility to take a few days of humanitarian leave each year, allowing us to take a week off to dedicate to this action. That's not very common in companies. It's not very common indeed. For me, for an American company – we are very proud of this – it was American, born in Chicago over 100 years ago. That's quite a story. And actually, cables are the historical activity, but now you are a conductor, a leader of Industry 4.0. Thank you, Aurélien Fabre, Vice President of Sales for Europe, Middle East, and Africa at Belden.