Radu Demetrescoux has been a manufacturing consultant for 25 years and recently authored a Lean Toolbox (in French) with actionable details on 64 tools. He has seen the French manufacturing sector losing half its factories and is working to rebuild it. This is how he explains what happened and the way forward. It includes an endorsement of our Introduction to Manufacturing as a contribution to this effort!

The Numbers

Between 1995 and 2015, France lost almost half of its factories and a third of its industrial jobs. In French economic statistics, the industry sector encompasses extraction and refining in addition to manufacturing.  The share of Industry in GDP has fallen from 35% in 1970 to less than 20% currently. The share of manufacturing in GDP fell to 11% in 2017 compared to 17% in 1995.  The objective stated by the government is to quickly increase the share of manufacturing in GDP to 15%.

Why the Decline?

There are several causes this situation:

• The conversion to a service economy.
• The opening of world trade and competition from countries with low labor costs.
• Outsourcing of certain activities to the service sector
• An increase in production costs, linked to taxation.

But the deeper cause is the paradigm that industry, and particularly manufacturing, is a second-class activity, less “noble” than services and other so-called activities of the future. This paradigm has permeated the population which has gradually turned away from industry and especially manufacturing.

The Consequences

Deindustrialization has had consequences:

• An increase in unemployment in traditionally industrial regions.
• The impoverishment of certain living areas and medium-sized towns
• The deterioration of the French trade balance
• Loss of competitiveness compared to other European countries, notably Germany

And above all, for what interests us, loss of skills in the field. Today, an entire generation has lost these skills.

The French nuclear industry, for example, has been experiencing a growing lack of qualified professionals for nearly 10 years.

In 2020, the French nuclear power  was short  8,000 employees, according to the French Nuclear Energy Company (SFEN)

Prospects for Recovery 

With the announcement of the civil nuclear recovery plan in 2022, providing for the construction of six new EPR reactors, recruitment needs rise to around 30,000 people for the next few years.

Since the mid-2010s, we have observed the beginnings of reindustrialization:

• Stabilization, then a slight increase in industrial employment since  2017.
• Creation of 108,000 additional jobs in industrial professions in 2022.
• Projection of 500 more factories in 2023 compared to 2016.

This trend is supported by public policies aimed at strengthening the competitiveness of French industry and promoting the relocation of industrial activities on the national territory. Reindustrialization is crucial to meeting current economic, social and environmental challenges, particularly in innovation, skilled employment, and ecological transition.

What to do

In this context, it is important to accelerate training and upgrading efforts in this direction to quickly catch up with other European countries that are doing better (Germany, for example) and re-enter international competition, from which France has gradually dropped out in recent decades. For this purpose, Baudin & Netland’s Introduction to Manufacturing can play an important role in the public interest.