CEO Sustainability Series | Aurélien Ricci, Founder, DWS

Question 1: What has your company’s sustainability journey been like so far?

When DWS was founded, one of the key missions was to provide innovative laser marking solutions to the Supply Chain in order to reduce waste in general. Precisely, we aim to:

• Introduce laser solution to replace less versatile and less sustainable technology (e.g. inkjet printing that requires consumables)

• Optimise laser marking efficiency to increase production throughput without adding new processes

• Make use of laser technology versatility and both infinite and immediate configurability to produce one-of-kind products or lately differentiated products at the industrial scale

• Reduce waste by minimising material consumption and non-conformities (e.g. removal of outer packaging and labels for consumer products)

Through the projects with material experts, packaging manufacturers and exquisite retailers, DWS solutions are proven to enhance Supply Chain efficiency and production processes. Our goal is to reduce GHE gas emission and water consumption at both sector and industry levels.

DWS takes the Sustainability initiative further by looking at its own activities and actively reducing the amount of GHE gas we produce.

Q2: What are some of the biggest sustainability issues you have faced and how did you tackle all these sets of challenges?

Mobility of employees and shipment of our products have been identified as one of the main causes of GHE gas emission at DWS. In response to that, we financially support public transport subscription for our employees to encourage them to use public transportation. For the shipment of our products, we promote reuse of packaging (e.g. carboard boxes and wooden pallets).

As machine production is the core part of our business, excessive energy waste and short product lifecycle are other obstacles to Sustainability. To tackles these challenges, we have chosen high-end components with longer lifetime and with refurbishing capacity to further extend the lifetime of our products. We also offer to all our clients a tailored maintenance scheme of the major elements that extends the lifetime of our machines by up to 50%.

Q3: How is technology helping your company achieve its sustainability targets?

As mentioned earlier, travel is one of the key causes of GHE gas emission. At DWS, in order to minimise this impact, our machines are designed with a system that connects them to the internet. It allows inspection, maintenance and updates to be carried out remotely. Thanks to this technology, the need of on-site service is drastically reduced thus achieving our Sustainability targets.