Nexans has partnered with Schneider Electric on a joint program to take its digital journey to the next level. The aim is to accelerate the transformation of Nexans into a business driven by clear, rich and actionable data as the foundation for improved business performance, safety and flexibility. The digitalization of its factories will further improve the efficiency of production lines, enable predictive maintenance and reduce carbon emissions.

It will also contribute to the Group's commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. Customers for Nexans's cable products and services will experience the benefits of the program through enhanced products availability. Nexans decided to collaborate with Schneider Electric after witnessing the successful roll-out of its digital transformation program across more than 115 sites worldwide.

Applying a philosophy of "Think big. Act small. Scale fast", yielded impressive results.

These include an up to 80% reduction in maintenance time by implementing predictive maintenance solutions as well as a 15% reduction in energy costs. Industrial innovation is driven by powerful software and data analytics that increases both productivity and sustainability. Schneider Electric's EcoStruxure platform gives industrial enterprises focused insights to understand process and operational data and uniquely enables common cross-function, live monitoring and application data sharing.

This leads to faster improvements in operational performance, improved quality control, reduction in energy and raw materials use, better maintenance and increased profitability. The Nexans collaboration with Schneider commenced in October 2020 with a local diagnosis of two pilot plants in Europe. It has focused on monitoring energy usage and predictive, condition-based maintenance.

The aim has been to identify improvement initiatives that will yield a return on investment in less than three years. Globally, the pilot program has also audited Nexans's current information technology and operational technology to establish the best systems to deploy for the future.