Stéarinerie Dubois, a company specializing in the creation and production of esters, has entrusted batir france ingénierie (Spie Batignolles) with the construction of a new building to house a quality control laboratory and a research and development laboratory, at its historic site in Ciron (36). Construction of the laboratory, which began in late 2023, will be completed in July 2025. 

Batir france ingénierie wanted to make this project the pilot for a project development method based on the digital twin.

Digital innovation at the heart of the project

The use of a digital twin developed by batir france ingénierie teams is both a technical and collaborative innovation. 

Previously, each software package used in a BIM approach had its own constraints and was built around a core of different data. As a result, flows between the various departments at batir france ingénierie, and with partner design offices, were disrupted.

"The challenge was therefore to work on the entire project development workflow and associated software to ensure that they were interoperable and able to work around a single core of data. In addition to instantly measuring the impact of a project modification, this innovation enables us to continuously feed data, which can be reused for all our future projects".explains Guillaume Daoulas, Managing Director of batir france ingénierie.

All stakeholders then have a real, scalable digital twin, to support the customer's informed decision-making on various aspects of the project.

At the end of June, batir france ingénierie won the major Tech Show trophy for its work on the molecular laboratory for Stéarinerie Dubois. The award recognizes the most ambitious construction projects based on innovative technology. Batir France Ingénierie was honored for its work on the adaptability of the software used to design and build the Stéarinerie Dubois laboratory around shared data. "We won this award because we have succeeded in de-siloing businesses, deploying a new approach to project development around the digital twin."says Guillaume Daoulas.

A high-tech building

The three-storey building will house two types of laboratory activities in addition to dedicated tertiary premises: a 550 m² R&D laboratory on the ground floor, equipped with a dozen large-volume fume cupboards with 2.2-metre glass fronts, and a 650 m² quality control laboratory on the first floor.

In the R&D laboratory, fume cupboards will ensure the safety of operators when handling chemical elements. The laboratory ventilation process constantly blows in air equivalent to that extracted, while maintaining the required temperature and cleanliness of the air in the premises.

In the quality control laboratory, operators will be responsible for analyzing products from the R&D laboratory and continuously monitoring the quality of products manufactured in the nearby production plant on the historic site.

As the area allocated to the laboratory's construction is very uneven, batir france ingénierie's teams designed a building adapted to this topography, with a basement that takes advantage of a difference in level of several meters. 

A requirement for homogeneous temperatures within the R&D and quality control laboratory conditioned the choice of equipment retained by batir france ingénierie and constituted a real technical challenge during the building design studies. 

One room in the quality control laboratory will be dedicated to the use of chromatographs. These machines generate a great deal of heat, and require the installation of additional means to maintain temperature levels compatible with good practice.

A Carrier reversible heat pump will provide heating and cooling for the building. Two Hydronic single-flow AHUs will provide controlled compensation for the two laboratories. For the tertiary sector, ventilation and air treatment will be provided by a VIM dual-flow unit. This dual-flow unit recovers over 90 % of energy produced to ensure the comfort of these premises.

"This major investment combines product and process innovation, and manufacturing excellence, in a single production facility. First and foremost, it will enable us to accelerate our innovation strategy. Our aim is to develop new products and processes, bringing proven added value to our customers and in line with the principles of "green chemistry".says Hervé Plessix, Managing Director of Stéarinerie Dubois. It also strengthens our quality control capabilities. Our customers are rightly becoming ever more demanding. Giving ourselves the means to anticipate these demands is a formidable growth lever for the company.

With RegimenLogic, a Perfect Corp. tool optimized by artificial intelligence (AI), RegimenPro, an e-commerce platform specializing in skincare, provides dermatologists and their patients with a skin diagnosis.

In the healthcare field, artificial intelligence (AI) is proving more accurate than humans at distinguishing malignant from benign lesions. According to one study*, 61.5 % of dermatologists believe that AI is of real interest in reducing the risk of misdiagnosis.

Founded by American dermatologists Patricia Farris and Ruth Tedaldi, RegimenPro enables dermatologists to recommend products online, following an assessment of the patient's skin condition. This e-commerce platform is also capable of tracking the patient's treatment progress, while earning a commission on each sale of the recommended product.

Convinced of the relevance of adding a skin diagnosis tool to their portal, both to increase the accuracy of diagnoses and to enable doctors to save time on consultations, the founders of RegimenPro evaluated five companies before opting for Perfect Corp.'s real-time skin analysis technology, which covers a range of 12 skin problems. "We were very impressed by the accuracy of the analysis. Our company was founded by dermatologists, so we always rely on science and evidence. The studies on the accuracy of Perfect Corp.'s AI skin analysis from Dr. Feldman at Wake Forest School of Medicine really tipped the scales for us." explains Jodi Nightingale.

The e-commerce platform is offered free of charge to dermatologists, and asks them, upon registration, to enter their preferred products for each of the 12 skin conditions analyzed by RegimenLogic AI SkinCare Assessment (which includes criteria such as redness, dryness, wrinkles, dark circles, acne, skin firmness, radiance and other skin concerns). 

Rather than single products, dermatologists can list a complete set of products for any given skin condition. Physicians, like their patients, can then quantify the results of the treatments adopted as a result of the analysis. "Skin scores allow patients to actually see their conditions improve by following their dermatologist's care regimen. This can be very motivating and satisfying."say the partners.

Since using Perfect Corp.'s real-time skin analysis technology, RegimenPro claims to observe highly reliable, practitioner-validated results. The company has recorded a 55 % increase in the number of new doctors affiliated to the platform, and a 22 % growth in customer registrations.

"This partnership with RegimenPro illustrates our shared commitment to delivering effective solutions to our customers. RegimenPro's expertise with RegimenLogic in personalized skincare technology aligns with our vision of using AI and augmented reality to transform the beauty industry. We are convinced that this collaboration will enable the development of new services that will redefine the approach to skincare by consumers and professionals alike."says Sylvain Delteil, VP Business Development Europe at Perfect Corp.

_{* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2667062322007838}

_{Visuals taken from the Perfect Corp. and RegimenPro websites.}