Saturday, January 12, 2013

Behind the Scenes at L'Oreal


After a lovely breakfast at the hotel, we boarded a bus around 12:30pm heading to L’Oreal factory. Along the way our tour guide Corinne explained the company as she used to work there. The bus ride was an hour and a half. While on the bus we passed a big field of windmills.  We arrived at L’Oreal where we received our printed ID budges. Before we entered into the factory, we were outfitted with shoes, lab-coats, protection goggles and a hair net. Then we proceeded to a presentation given by the plant manager. He explained to us that the factory launched 365 new products last year. This is incredible considering that it amounts to one new product each day. We were split into two groups. We had a guided tour through assembly line in the factory. One group focused on Esse nail polish among other brands, as well as foundation and lipsticks. The other focused on powders and beauty products. It was amazing to see the products that are not in the market yet. This is one of the reasons we were not allowed to take photograph inside the plant.

I was impressed with the technology used in the manufacturing system.  Most of the work is done by machineries and robots. The plant has 300 workers and they produce 20 billion of products a year. Due to so much technology used in the factory, the workers seemed very relaxed and were eager to show their products. The Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) carried all the finished boxes of products ready to be shipped. It is incredible how they moved up and down the whole building without getting through the use of a preloaded program and a Wi-Fi feedback system.

My group focused on Lipsticks and nail polish. Our tour guide and the Industrial Engineer Gregory explained in details how the assembly system worked.  He was very patient and gave us enough time to ask questions. He would often stop the machine to show how it functions and he would put it back on again. It was impressive to see how a lipstick liquid is turned into a solid bar lipstick in less than 30 seconds. 

- Alain Rwabukamba




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