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Émilie Delvoye, Director of Communications at Prompt, interviews Alain Ouzilleau of Cabico & Co, who explains how he made his mark in the high-end furniture industry by automating his production lines.
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Émilie: Alain, Cabico is a Coaticook-based manufacturer of high-end custom-made furniture. You combine traditional craftsmanship, particularly in cabinetmaking, with the latest production technologies. Is this true?
Alain: Absolutely. And that was part of the challenge, but also part of our vision: not to distort the business model we’ve been building for 20 years, a model truly centered on a high-end, made-to-measure, highly customizable product.
Émilie: You began this digital transformation around 20 years ago, when you joined the company, with a background in aeronautics and defense. So you were already used to working with new technologies. Arriving in a more traditional environment, but faced with particularly complex challenges, led you to undertake a major project. It was in this context that you called on Prompt’s support for a project aimed at improving software interconnectivity within a 4.0 production line. Can you tell us a little about it?
Alain: Yes, absolutely. In fact, 20 years ago in North America, the cabinet and furniture industry was very traditional, with little digital technology and little robotization. Today, things have improved a lot. One of my competitors, like us, has invested heavily in digitalization and transformation over the past five years. But all this is to say that we wanted to go one step further, precisely because of the nature of our product, which is highly customized, and our business model.
And once again, we’d like to thank Prompt for helping us, particularly financially, to pursue this project. 20 years ago, the vision was there, but it was still in its infancy at the time. It’s really in the last five years that we’ve accelerated the pace of digital implementation in our processes. And it was two years ago, in terms of the interconnectivity between all the systems we had put in place, that we received excellent support from Prompt to enable us to keep moving forward.
Émilie: So, what you explained a little bit was that you had robots or very cutting-edge equipment, and you went for the best in terms of quality, so to speak, for each of these machines. And that led to a certain complexity in being able to link all these machines together.
Alain: Yes, in fact, not just at machine level, nor just at robot and equipment level, but really at process level. For example, the whole configuration part of design and conception, the product configurator that we developed with a local partner in Sherbrooke, but also the other systems linked to production planning. Because, once again, given that everything is very bespoke, planning plays a crucial role in having an efficient production floor. So we went in search of the best planning system, the one developed by the French company Dassault, out of theme.
We really chose the best systems for the different business processes, with bridges connecting them all. We adopted a Best of Breed approach, i.e. the best software for each function. But this brings with it the challenge of connecting all these systems and ensuring that everything remains efficient. So that’s what we’ve been doing over the last year and a half, or even the last two years: putting a lot of emphasis on the connectivity of all this software, as well as connectivity, as you mentioned Émilie, with the production floor, the robots on it and our craftsmen.
Émilie: So, what has this project enabled you to accomplish? What impact has it had?
Alain: This has enabled us to bring about a level of integration between data, information and data that is truly optimized. We still have a long way to go, and we’ll need your help and support. We won’t stop innovating. We’re also talking more and more about integrating artificial intelligence into all this data. But in fact, this project has above all enabled us to integrate data, from the designer’s and our customer’s idea, right through to the transformation of this data into optimization for the use of raw materials, in particular for panel cutting, assembly, work instructions for our employees and all the way back to financial information: profitability by customer and profitability by product.
So it’s really this integration of data that we’ve taken to a very interesting level, and which is essential for making the right decisions as entrepreneurs and business people.
Émilie: For the benefit of our listeners, what you were explaining in preparation for this interview is that, when we talk about starting from the idea, we’re really talking about offering a very simple and intuitive tool, which designers can use to work with all kinds of options and constraints to be able to draw their project. All this data is then passed on to operations, which can then give shape to the project.
Alain: Absolutely, Émilie. There is some good design software in the industry, but it’s still design. Where we’ve gone much further is that our designer can put his idea into the tool, and at the same time, in real time, the engineering of this product is done thanks to our systems that we’ve developed.
This means that when he sends us his order, our teams check it, make sure there are no errors, and advise the designer on how to optimize the project. But it’s already ready to be transferred to our other systems, which we mentioned a few minutes ago, to ensure integration and optimize operations while meeting a very tight delivery deadline. And it all happens exactly to plan, from idea to installation, with no discrepancies between what the designer wanted and what we delivered.
Émilie: And so, this really represents an element that enables you to differentiate yourself on the market today?
Alain: Absolutely. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s a competitive advantage that makes some designers choose to work with us, precisely because of the flexibility and ease of collaborating with us, while giving free rein to their creativity.
Émilie: So, Alain, I know you’ve been through several major crises over the past 20 years, since you embarked on this great digital transformation. What still motivates you to keep innovating in the current context?
Alain: In fact, innovation is our best weapon, whatever the crisis. Crises, by definition, are mostly unexpected, like the tariff crisis we’re currently experiencing. We are a major exporter to the United States. But if we hadn’t innovated five years ago – and we did at the very start of the Covid crisis, moving forward despite the very uncertain environment – we wouldn’t be where we are today.
I would say that you absolutely have to keep innovating, whatever the crisis. In fact, it becomes the essential tool for weathering them, and, in calmer times, for generating growth and profitability.
Émilie: Thank you very much, Alain, for this message of hope.
Alain: Émilie, I’m delighted. You need resilience to get through these crises, but you also need tools and partners like you.
Émilie: So, if you too have ideas for innovation, don’t hesitate to go ahead and contact Prompt to present your project.
