By setting up its own “Digital Factory”, Groupe PSA has created a central contact point to support the operational departments in their digital transformation. The new digitalization center – an independent unit of several hundred experts – has now opened the doors of its 3,000 m² premises at Peugeot’s Poissy plant , with the company pursuing a three-pronged strategy: The “Customer Digital Factory” is responsible for all tasks relating to the online customer experience, from the company profile to CRM tasks. The “Data Factory” handles internal issues, such as optimizing process flows to improve the operational performance of individual production areas. The “Connected Services Factory” tackles the development of new, networked IIoT services.

In a study last fall, digital association Bitkom criticized internal company digitalization strategies as rarely being defined and implemented at management level. The French already appear to be one step ahead of the game here, with its Chief Digital Officer Christophe Rauturier , who was specially appointed at the end of 2017 to coordinate such strategies.