ACTIA EMS is an integrated industrial partner in Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS), combining engineering, industrialization and multi-site electronic production, capable of supporting manufacturers from build-to-print to build-to-spec and ODM. This interview with Hervé Dufresne, Market Leader EMS & Design Services at ACTIA, presents the vision of a next-generation integrated EMS: early industrialization, advanced automation, robust supply chain and international complementarity of sites.

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Interview with Hervé Dufresne, Market Leader EMS & Design Services ACTIA

At a time when manufacturers are looking for partners capable of intervening from the upstream phases, by integrating design, industrialisation, automated production, supply chain and obsolescence management, ACTIA EMS is strengthening its positioning as a next-generation EMS: an integrated EMS, capable of moving from build to print to build-to-spec, and of offering ODM (Original Design Manufacturing) services.

By combining Design Services, DFM, automation and support over the entire life cycle, ACTIA EMS supports manufacturers in the automotive, rail, energy, off-highway and aeronautics sectors in the implementation of their complex electronic projects.

To understand this strategic evolution, we met Hervé DUFRESNE. With 25 years of experience in electronics manufacturing at ACTIA, he has successively held various responsibilities at several of the group’s EMS sites, in Tunisia, France and the United States. From industrialization to production, from quality to customer project management, he has built his career at the heart of operations. Now Market Leader EMS & Design Services, this continuous immersion in the workshops gives him a rare perspective, both international, technical and resolutely oriented towards industrial performance.

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How would you define ACTIA EMS today?

Hervé Dufresne:
 « ACTIA EMS is above all based on a solid foundation: its historical EMS core, focused on electronic assembly from customer files, in a build-to-print logic. This manufacturing expertise still forms the basis of our offer and our industrial know-how.

But today, expectations are changing. Manufacturers are no longer just looking for an assembler, but a partner capable of supporting them upstream, transforming a specification into an industrialized, qualified and series-ready product. That’s the whole logic of build to spec.

ACTIA EMS is part of this evolution with an integrated approach, combining:

• Design Services
• Industrialisation (DFM – Design for Manufacturing)
• Product qualification
• Multi-site production
• Purchasing and supply management
• MCO (Maintenance in Operational Condition including obsolescence management).

It is this complementarity between EMS and ODM that makes ACTIA a global industrial partner, capable of supporting its customers from design to series production, throughout the entire product life cycle. »

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What strategic role does the EMS activity play in the ACTIA Group?

Hervé Dufresne:
 « The ACTIA EMS is not a complement: it is a structural building block of our industrial model. Since the integration of our production tools, EMS has been part of the group’s strategic foundation. Driven by the diversity of customer requirements, we have chosen to maintain an EMS activity for three major reasons: to challenge our competitiveness, to amortize industrial investments and to maintain a high level of technology.

This cohabitation between the group’s OEM products and EMS projects for external customers creates a virtuous effect: increasing the expertise of the teams, maintaining qualified skills, pooling industrial investments and permanent technological watch. It is an accelerator of industrial maturity.

« The opening of EMS feeds ACTIA’s resilience and industrial excellence. »

« Today, we address a wide variety of markets: industry, home automation, railways, energy, automotive, off-highway systems, aeronautics, but also space and defence. The levels of requirement differ greatly from one sector to another, but our culture from the automotive industry allows us to bring the same rigor in terms of quality, process and reliability everywhere. This plurality of markets reinforces the resilience of the EMS ACTIA model and continuously feeds our ability to produce robust, industrializable and competitive electronics. »

ACTIA EMS – Key industrial performance figures

• <10 PPM defects
• 2 M units/year on some lines
• 3 main sites (France, Tunisia, United States)
• Expertise: DFM, NPI, industrialization, automation

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Can you present the different ACTIA industrial sites and their complementarity?

Hervé Dufresne:
« The EMS activity is organized around three major electronic sites with the same global quality standard. ACTIA Colomiers in France, CIPI ACTIA in Tunisia and ACTIA Electronics in Detroit, USA. These three sites respond to different logics, but all apply the same level of industrial excellence.

Colomiers (France) — The Group’s center of expertise and industrialization

« ACTIA Colomiers is the group’s showcase and historic factory, with its proximity to the development teams based in Toulouse at its headquarters and a very high level of process maturity. This is where we secure the critical phases: NPI (New Product Introduction), pre-series, complex prototypes, advanced industrialization. »

However, our strategic industrial choices and our organization allow us to be competitive on high-volume programs.

Key points:

• Pre-series and complex prototypes.
• Strong presence of engineering and industrialization teams.
• The group’s technological showcase and industrial demonstrator.
• Maturity of the processes to secure rampups and serial passages. »

CIPI ACTIA (Tunisia) — Controlled competitiveness and large volumes

« CIPI Tunisia is a very efficient site, with well-established processes and a strong capacity to produce in volume. He benefits from an optimised hourly rate but also from a continuous investment in equipment. »

Key points:

• Automatic high-speed lines.
• Very large production volumes.
• Robust and proven processes.
• Enhanced global competitiveness.
• Complementarity with the Colomiers site

ACTIA Electronics – Detroit (Michigan, United States) — Proximity to the North American market

« The Detroit, Michigan facility was created to support our international customers in the North American market. We have deployed the same industrial standards, certifications and tools as in our European and Tunisian sites. This site meets a strong demand for local production, particularly in the automotive and commercial vehicle sectors. »

Key points:

• Dedicated to the North American market.
• Quality standards aligned with those of France and Tunisia.
• Group industrial strategy
• Ability to handle customer projects requiring local production (Buy America / logics of sovereignty and proximity).

Spain & Sweden sites — The relay for micro and small series

« In addition, our Spanish and Swedish sites play a key role in our industrial footprint, especially for small series and local needs. Spain, in particular, is a strong front-office in the rail market. »

Key points:

• Micro series and small series.
• Strong flexibility and customer proximity.
• Railway specialisation for the Spanish site.

Based in Sweden, ACTIA Nordic serves the Scandinavian and Northern European markets, known for their strong focus on sustainability, technological innovation, and early adoption of connected vehicle solutions.

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How does ACTIA EMS differ from other subcontractors?

Hervé Dufresne:
« At ACTIA EMS, industrialisation is not just a simple step: it is an integral part of the project approach from the very first design phases. We are not an EMS whose activities are limited to the assembly and testing of PCBAs and finished products. We are also an engineering company. Our industrialization capacity: Design to Cost, DFM, co-design: is a major differentiator. Reliability, throughput and repeatability are all things to be designed. »

In concrete terms, this approach makes it possible to anticipate manufacturing constraints as early as possible, to optimize technical choices and to secure costs, well before the series ramp-up. Inherited in part from the requirements of the automotive sector, this culture of large volumes now permeates all of the group’s EMS activities: process control, industrial robustness, performance management and permanent search for repeatability.

« Industrializing early means controlling cost, quality, deadlines and reducing risk.« 

For example, on a recent project in the industrial vehicle sector, the involvement of the Purchasing, Industrial and DFM teams at a very early stage made it possible to optimize the bill of materials, simplify the product architecture and secure the component choices (source, price, durability) as well as to take into account production constraints during PCB routing and mechanical design. The result: a 15% reduction in the target cost, an increase in production from the first series in production, and a time-to-market shortened by several weeks.

This industrialization capacity is reinforced by a large-scale supply chain, capable of managing complex purchases, securing components and alerts in real time, in a context of high tension on electronic markets.

Finally, ACIA’s international presence offers great industrial agility: adapting production capacities to volumes, supporting ramp-ups, balancing loads and skills between sites. An organization designed to support customers throughout the product lifecycle, from co-design to series, with a constant objective: to deliver reliable, industrializable and competitive electronics. »

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What technological trends are transforming your business?

Hervé Dufresne:
 « Undeniably, automation is today an essential lever for competitiveness and quality. Automation is no longer an option: it is a key factor in industrial performance. At ACTIA EMS, it is at the heart of our industrial model. We massively automate integration operations: screwing, clipping, insertion, functional tests, mechanical closing, which allows us to reach very high production levels, with some lines up to 2 million units per year.

This advanced automation translates directly into a very high level of quality performance. We achieve results of less than 10 PPM (single digit PPM – Parts Per Million). This performance is based on an inseparable combination: volume, automation and absolute rigor in the execution of industrial processes.

« Automation is no longer an option: it is the foundation of sustainable competitiveness. »

Data also plays a structuring role in this transformation. Thanks to our MES (Manufacturing Execution System), all industrial data is consolidated and exploited to drive continuous improvement. The evolution is incremental, but constant, and each step contributes to strengthening the overall performance of the lines.

Finally, this transformation is based on a strong conviction: the strong complementarity between automation and human excellence. Automation improves repeatability, ergonomics, and quality, while teams focus on analysis, supervision, problem-solving, and high-value activities. It is this complementarity between technology and people that really makes the difference. »

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How does ACTIA secure industrial continuity throughout the product life cycle?

Hervé Dufresne:
« It all starts with the BOM (Bill of Materials). We support our customers very early on, by alerting on end-of-life components, by proposing qualified alternatives and by constantly monitoring obsolescence. This anticipation is key, as the material represents more than 80% of the cost produced. This is why we also take care of purchasing and procurement, with a supply chain capable of managing risks and securing components for long lead times, particularly in critical markets such as aeronautics, defence and energy.

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What do you think are the key success factors of a sustainable EMS partnership?

Hervé Dufresne:

« Customer satisfaction remains the foundation of any sustainable partnership. It is of course based on the QCD (Quality, Cost, Deadline) fundamentals, but also on the ability to precisely understand the challenges of each customer and to respond to them in an appropriate way. A satisfied customer is above all a customer who feels listened to, understood and supported in taking into account his specific requirements.
It is precisely this requirement for understanding and adaptation that structures our organization and our operating methods. At ACTIA EMS, our strength is based on four pillars: industrialisation, quality, supply chain and the complementarity of our sites. But today, one of the major challenges is clearly agility: reducing complexity, speeding up decision-making, streamlining processes. In a tense industrial environment, this ability to adapt makes all the difference.

« Agility has become an operational imperative. »

This is also what I encourage manufacturers to look for in an EMS partner. An EMS should not be a simple operations provider, but a strategic partner, capable of supporting projects over the long term, understanding the markets and business requirements, and quickly integrating the customer’s constraints. The relationship must be based on proximity, anticipation and responsiveness.

In the end, the strength of ACTIA EMS is our ability to share objectives with our customers: DFM, design to cost, quality, deadlines, competitiveness: and to achieve them together, in a logic of sustainable partnership. Achieving quality, time and competitiveness objectives together is what guides each of our collaborations. »

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Conclusion: EMS according to ACTIA: a complete, sustainable and embodied industrial value

Over the course of the interview, one thing became clear: ACTIA does not offer a standardised nursing home. ACTIA offers comprehensive industrial support, based on:

• mastery of design and industrialization,
• the robustness of the supply chain,
• the repeatability offered by automation,
• the international complementarity of the sites,
• a strong culture of quality from the automotive industry,
• a long-term partnership approach.

EMS ACTIA is not a service: it is a global, structuring offer, anchored in the group’s industrial DNA, designed to support manufacturers over the long term.

Behind the processes and automated lines, it is above all committed teams that support manufacturers over the long term.

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Glossary

• EMS (Electronic Manufacturing Services) Electronic manufacturing covering assembly, industrialization and production.
• Buildto‑Print (BTP) The customer provides the entire definition file (plans, diagrams, bill of materials), and the EMS carries out the electronic assembly in accordance with these documents, without modifying the design.
• Buildto‑Spec (BTS) The customer expresses a functional need or specification, and the EMS transforms this specification into an industrialized, qualified, series-production-ready product, taking over design and industrialization.
• ODM Original Design Manufacturing. The EMS takes charge of the complete design of an electronic product (design, industrialization, qualification), then ensures serial production. The final product is designed by EMS on behalf of the customer.
• DFM (Design for Manufacturing)Optimized design for ease of manufacturing, quality, and cost.
• NPI (New Product Introduction)Structured transition from prototype to industrial production.
• BOM (Bill of Materials)A complete nomenclature of the components of a product.
• PPM (Parts Per Million)Quality indicator: defects per million parts produced.
• MES (Manufacturing Execution System)Digital control of production lines and data.
• Design to Cost : Design optimization to achieve a cost target.

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Remember

• ACTIA EMS goes far beyond electronic assembly: the group supports its customers from design to series production, in an integrated and engineered EMS logic.

• Early industrialization (DFM, Design to Cost, co-design) makes it possible to secure costs, quality, deadlines — and to significantly reduce project risks.

• Automation is at the heart of the ACTIA EMS industrial model, with lines capable of reaching several million units per year and quality levels below 10 PPM.

• Industrial continuity is at stake from the bill of materials (BOM): anticipating obsolescence, securing components and managing the supply chain are key levers for sustainable performance.

• The international complementarity of the sites (France, Tunisia, United States, Spain, Sweden) makes it possible to fine-tune capacities to market volumes and requirements.

• ACTIA EMS is part of a long-term partnership approach, based on agility, customer proximity and the shared achievement of quality, deadline and competitiveness objectives.

FAQ : ACTIA EMS