GEFCO Group, a global provider of industrial supply chain services and the European leader in automotive logistics, has announced the opening of its Innovation Factory. The initiative represents a milestone in the Group’s innovation strategy and aims to promote new ideas and creativity in GEFCO teams around the world.
Boosting the spirit of innovation internally
GEFCO’s Innovation Factory is designed to nurture a culture of innovation, empowering every employee to invent and explore innovative ideas, with the potential of developing them into solutions to support business growth. The Group’s aim is to boost the creative spirit of its employees by providing an internal incubator for their most promising new concepts.
The Innovation Factory will be open all year long, enabling candidates, working in teams, to submit their projects and pitch their innovative ideas at any time. These can apply to any area of GEFCO’s business, but must be aligned with GEFCO’s innovation axes, meet a client need and be scalable across the Group. An innovation screening committee of internal experts will evaluate the best concepts based on these criteria. The selected teams will then be invited to the Innovation Factory, where they will benefit from internal expertise, as well as the resources to successfully develop their project. After carrying out a proof of concept, participants will be offered paid leave from their regular job to fully focus on developing their ideas.
“We are very pleased to announce the opening of the GEFCO Innovation Factory, which is designed to promote a spirit of creativity and innovation among our employees” said Luc Nadal, Chairman of GEFCO’s Management Board. “GEFCO’s goal is to provide customers with smart and flexible supply chain solutions and I am confident that our Innovation Factory will help us to push back boundaries and accelerate growth.”
Shared innovation
GEFCO is already cultivating its internal innovation ecosystem, with such achievements as My car is there, a personalized transport service that brings a car to the end customer through a smart phone application. On June 12, 2018, GEFCO was awarded Innovation Leader for My Car is There at the Automotive Logistics Europe Exhibition in Bonn, Germany
In addition, the Group is actively monitoring innovative developments and adopting a “test and learn” approach to new technologies, using for instance robots for warehouse management in France or drones for warehouse inventories in Spain. In parallel, GEFCO is collaborating with start-ups to accelerate innovation. GEFCO’s Innovation Factory is aligned with the Group’s policy of innovation started several years ago and reaffirmed with recent partnerships.
In March 2018, the Group announced its partnership with Techstars, a global accelerator that has supported the development of over 1,000 international start-ups. Through this collaboration, GEFCO is also partnering with Partech Shaker, an international start-up campus where tech companies from all over the world can grow in the best possible conditions.