I had the chance to visit Valeo’s Special Products division in the Ath area of Belgium. It’s managed by Laurent Evrard, former R&D director of Valeo Lighting Systems. I know him very well as a passionate lighting engineer, who progressed from Project & Engineering through manufacturing. He worked several years with me and then he succeeded me as the head of R&D of the Lighting Product Group during 8 years. Since 2019, he is in charge of Special Products in the Lighting Product Group.
Special Products is an activity of Valeo’s Visibility business group, which is led by Maurizio Martinelli. They focus on lighting products other than main headlamps and rear lamps. A decade ago, fog lamps were their main product, with a volume of thousands every day. By this high-volume production, they acquired great expertise in automation techniques they use now for their new products. I saw several production modules without any worker attending, for none was needed. Read all about my visit in this week’s in-depth.
Don’t forget the Tokyo DVN Workshop coming soon on 6-7 June! That’s just a few weeks away, so if you haven’t yet signed up, come and register. I’m looking forward to seeing you then and there.