Freyssinet Aero is a French industrial SME, a subcontractor serving the aerospace and space industries. The company currently has just over 120 employees and operates through several specialized brands: Freyssinet Aero Equipment, Freyssinet Aero Coating, Freyssinet Aero Services, Freyssinet Aero Additive, and Titanium Casting.
This organizational structure enables the company to offer a comprehensive range of services to its customers, from titanium machining to surface treatment, including metal additive manufacturing, tooling, and titanium casting.
In a context of industrial transformation and the standardization of its practices, Freyssinet Aero sought to strengthen its action plan management, while gradually paving the way for broader project management.
In this testimonial article, Sébastien Delpech, Performance Manager at Freyssinet Aero, and Arnaud Votié, Innovation Manager, discuss this evolution: from an initial need related to quality action plans and continuous improvement to a management framework now used by several teams.
Freyssinet Aero’s challenge: improving management structure in a multi-entity environment
Currently undergoing a transformation toward Industry 4.0, Freyssinet Aero is seeking to improve performance and strengthen integration across its systems. With this in mind, the company also sought to better structure the management of its quality and continuous improvement action plans.
The initial need was clearly defined: to have a shared solution, designed for multi-entity operations, capable of facilitating the day-to-day tracking of action items.
It is in this setting that Freyssinet Aero has chosen to partner with IDhall. The solution initially addressed this need by providing a common framework for organizing, tracking, and sharing action plans. Since then, the tool’s applications have expanded. It is now also used to manage innovation projects, as well as technical projects.
A starting point: standardizing action plan tracking
Initially, Freyssinet Aero sought to standardize the monitoring of a wide variety of action plans: performance, system quality, product quality, and process quality. Management still relied on inconsistent practices, with a solution used within one entity but not standardized across the group.
We already were using a tool at Freyssinet Aero Equipment, but it wasn’t shared with the other entities. Even within that entity, some action plans were still being tracked in Excel, which showed that there was room for improvement.
The challenge, therefore, was to find a solution capable of providing greater visibility into day-to-day tracking, without losing sight of the company’s specific requirements. In addition to monitoring operations, Freyssinet Aero also had specific criteria regarding usability, security, and hosting.
We were looking for a tool that would allow us to better visualize our schedules, with automatic notifications, as well as good usability and easy navigation. Security and hosting were also key criteria for us. It was very important that both the solution and its hosting be based in France.
Why Freyssinet Aero chose IDhall: a simple, adaptable, and co-developed solution
To select its tool, Freyssinet Aero relied on a collaborative approach. The goal was to compare the needs of several departments in order to select a solution that was truly suited to day-to-day needs.
We put together a fairly multidisciplinary group, representing the company’s various departments, to compare the solutions. Next, to make the decision easier, we worked together to create an evaluation and weighting matrix.
Following this process, IDhall was selected. Beyond the expected features, the tool stood out for its adaptability. For the organization, it was important to be able to tailor the solution to its needs, using a tool that was intuitive, easy to navigate, and capable of meeting the expectations identified during the selection process.
Our relationship with the Humanperf teams also played a role in our decision. The ability to communicate directly and easily with others, to configure the tool, and to collaboratively develop certain elements was seen as a real strength.
The ability to tailor the solution to our needs and to work with the Humanperf teams to co-create it—that was very important.
This approach made it easier for users to adopt the tool. Because users were involved in the selection process, the rollout was met with greater buy-in and helped facilitate the change.
From overseeing action plans to project management
Although IDhall was initially introduced to manage action plans, project management very quickly became one of the intended uses at Freyssinet Aero.
A specific need related to innovation projects
Arnaud Votié, Innovation Manager, was involved in the project team from the selection phase onward, with a different need than that of the quality department: to track multiple innovation projects, involving various stakeholders, schedules, tasks, and progress. This project-related aspect therefore had to be taken into account from the very beginning of the solution selection process.
With innovation projects, we don’t always know all the tasks right from the start. Technical hurdles can arise as the project progresses, so we need to be able to adjust the schedule, add tasks, and adapt the projects. I needed a tool that would let me manage that easily.
Expanded use in project management
Initially, IDhall streamlined the management of action plans and already meets the innovation team’s need to track its projects. Once these initial use cases are in place, Freyssinet Aero identified the building blocks needed within the tool to build a broader project management platform.
This development goes beyond the scope of innovation: IDhall is also used for other internal projects, particularly technical ones. The tool has thus become a common framework for managing projects that were previously tracked in Excel or MS Project, without a consistent approach.
Once the action plans were structured, we asked ourselves how to build our initiative management framework to manage projects. IDhall provided the essential building blocks for project management: team integration, risk analysis, planning, progress tracking, and financial analysis. Today, the use of IDhall for project management has been clarified.
This development marks a milestone in the harmonization of project management. IDhall is no longer used solely to track action plans: the tool is gradually becoming the common platform for structuring and managing projects.
IDhall, a platform for innovation that supports business operations
Within the organization, innovation is seen as a driver of performance. Operating as an aerospace subcontractor, the company has developed a dedicated innovation approach led by a cross-functional team that supports teams across the organization.
Technology, processes, data, energy, digital tools: the topics covered are diverse. The innovation team manages these projects from start to finish—from identifying the need to implementation, in collaboration with the relevant teams.
In this context, IDhall becomes a true day-to-day tool for the innovation team. It helps you organize projects, track tasks, and maintain an overview.
The IDhall tool precisely mirrors the various phases of the innovation process we have implemented: creating an initiative, validating it, organizing its implementation, and then tracking its progress.
Managing 35 to 40 innovation projects at a time
Currently, the innovation team is working on about 35 to 40 projects simultaneously. Depending on the subject matter, innovation must involve other departments: human resources, quality, maintenance, processes, or other internal stakeholders. The solution makes it possible to maintain a clear overview of projects, while involving the right people at the right time. Everyone can be assigned to a task, a validation, or a project milestone, without losing track of progress.
With IDhall, the innovation team leads the projects, but we can also bring in people from outside the team and assign them tasks. That’s what allows us to move projects forward with the right people.
Faster and more efficient innovation reviews
Every month, Arnaud Votié leads an innovation review with his team. The goal is to track projects, identify progress, challenges, and issues to address. This review then serves as the basis for a summary presented to management.
Preparing for these reviews used to be very time-consuming. We had to locate the right files, verify that the information was up to date, and piece together the big picture before we could even discuss the substance of the matter.
Since the team started using IDhall, it has been able to focus directly on what matters: the challenges they face, the decisions they need to make, and the next steps.
Before IDhall, preparing project reviews was very time-consuming: I had to open Excel files, check for updates, and track down the right information. Now, with IDhall, I can review projects with just a few clicks. We discuss challenges and progress, it’s very fast and highly efficient.
On this monthly review alone, Arnaud Votié estimates that he saves about two to three hours a month on preparing innovation reviews.
Another benefit lies in the daily monitoring of the project portfolio: IDhall provides a comprehensive overview without complicating management.
With IDhall, you can create a project very easily, without having to build everything from scratch. You can add tasks as you go, once you have a better understanding of the technical challenges. Today, I couldn’t do without it.
Shared use cases for better tracking of action items, projects, and KPIs
Bringing multiple use cases together in a single tool
Over time, IDhall has established itself as a shared platform for multiple teams. The tool is used to track action plans, manage technical projects, and oversee innovation projects. While practices vary by business unit, they now converge around a common goal: to better track ongoing initiatives and maintain a shared framework.
Usability is a real strength, as is collaboration. Having a single tool to manage our action plans and projects allows us to better track progress, set up automatic reminders, and monitor our portfolio of actions. With IDhall, collaboration has improved. The tool makes things easier.
This improvement in monitoring is also recognized during quality audits.
IDhall is regularly highlighted as a strength in quality audit reports.
Integration into the company’s data ecosystem
From the selection phase onward, Freyssinet Aero had identified the need to integrate IDhall with its data ecosystem. APIs were among the criteria evaluated, with the goal of being able to leverage performance metrics and integrate the solution into the company’s internal ecosystem.
This aspect has become even more significant today with the development of an internal data warehouse. The goal is to centralize the company’s data, but also to create metrics that are not always available in standard reports, particularly to track the effectiveness of initiatives.
Integration gateways were part of our criteria from the start, particularly anything related to APIs. The goal was to be able to leverage our performance metrics and connect the solution to our data environment.
