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WELCOME TO ALTIX ACCESS Q3 2026
Dear friends and partners of ALTIX,
Industrial leaders have never had more capability available to buy. Technology is advancing at extraordinary speed. AI is reshaping our factories and our decision processes. Expertise, equipment and capital can bring new capabilities online faster than ever. And yet the companies that consistently outperform are rarely distinguished by what they have purchased. They are distinguished by what they have built.
That idea runs through this edition of ALTIX Access.
It is powerfully reflected in our Industry Champion conversation with François Tardif, Executive Vice President, Americas Business Region, FORVIA. Four companies, three continents, and today a culture change he is determined not to let take a decade. His experience is a reminder that sustained performance is built over time — through people, judgment, discipline, and the willingness to keep challenging what comes next.
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The same principle applies as AI accelerates across industry. Technology can detect, analyze, predict and optimize. But turning those capabilities into performance still depends on an organization's ability to interpret, decide and act. That distinction is the subject of my perspective piece in this issue: industrial AI is what you buy; industrial intelligence is what you become.
Over more than 25 years in industry, and through our work at ALTIX, I have seen this distinction repeatedly. Leadership depth, organizational agility, trusted relationships and the ability to execute through uncertainty do not arrive with a purchase order. They are developed deliberately, tested through experience, and strengthened over time.
This thinking is also at the heart of THE SUPERFIT COMPANY, my first book, launching this fall. It brings together lessons from decades of industrial transformation around a question I believe is becoming increasingly important:
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The answer will never be a single technology, methodology or operating model. It is the capacity to keep getting better. And that capacity is built, not bought.
You will also find in this edition an invitation to the Global Leaders Forum & Industrial Excellence Honors on October 29, where fourteen industrial companies will be recognized and Serge Joris, CEO of Frigoglass Group, delivers the keynote; a People Insights warm welcome to Matt Linz; an update from the ALTIX Academy; and news from both sides of the Atlantic in Transatlantic Connections.
Thank you, as always, for reading — and for the work you do to keep industry moving forward.
With gratitude,
Yannick Schilly
Co-Founder, President & CEO
ALTIX Consulting
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INDUSTRY CHAMPIONS INTERVIEW
One-on-One with François Tardif
Executive Vice President, Americas Business Region, FORVIA
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Meet François Tardif, who has spent his career on the supplier side of the automotive industry — Valeo, Autoliv, Plastic Omnium, and now FORVIA — leading businesses across Europe, China, Japan, and now the Americas.
He shares what it takes to build an empowered, AI-ready organization in an industry that no longer has the luxury of a slow transformation.
Read the full interview →
View all Industry Champion interviews →
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"THE SUPERFIT COMPANY"
By Yannick Schilly
| | On October 30, ALTIX Press releases THE SUPERFIT COMPANY: Why Industrial Winners Never Stop Transforming — my first book, with a foreword by Serge Joris, CEO of Frigoglass Group. | | |
The Number I Could Not Make Peace With:
Seventy percent.
It is one of the most frequently cited numbers in transformation — and one I have never been willing to accept as inevitable.
After more than 25 years leading industrial transformations across Germany, China and the United States, and eight years working alongside industrial companies through ALTIX, I have come to believe the problem is not that companies don't know how to transform.
It is that too few build the capability to keep transforming.
On October 30, that argument becomes a book.
Read More →
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ALTIX PUBLICATIONS
Industrial AI Is What You Buy.
Industrial Intelligence Is What You Become.
by Yannick Schilly
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A veteran machinist named Joe once diagnosed a failing bearing with nothing but the palm of his hand — two days before any sensor caught it.
In this Perspective piece, Yannick Schilly uses that story to draw a sharp line between two terms industrial leaders keep using interchangeably: Industrial AI and Industrial Intelligence.
One arrives by subscription. The other is the reason some companies keep winning long after the technology stops being a differentiator. The distinction, he argues, decides who leads the next decade.
Read the full article →
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| GLOBAL LEADERS FORUM 2026 | | An Evening for Industry Champions | | |
Running an industrial company rarely leaves room to step back.
On October 29th, 160 senior industrial leaders will do exactly that — for one evening, at the Global Leaders Forum.
Fourteen companies will be honored. Four trusted partners will be there to celebrate alongside them. And for a few hours, the hustle can wait.
Read More →
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ALTIX ACADEMY
People Excellence is Business Excellence
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Industrial performance is often explained through strategy, technology, capital investment, or market position. But sustained excellence depends on something harder to replicate: people with the judgment and capability to turn those investments into results.
Technology can be bought. Processes can be implemented. Strategy can be defined. But the leaders making hundreds of decisions across a business every day have to be developed over time.
What separates companies that invest in their people from those that truly build leadership capability?
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ALTIX is pleased to welcome Matt Linz as Vice President of Business Development. Twenty-five years in industry have left Matt with something no résumé line fully captures: a trusted network built one relationship at a time, across companies, career changes, and conversations that started on a plant floor and lasted decades.
Read more →
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FOSTERING TRANSATLANTIC CONNECTIONS
Transatlantic Industry Updates & ALTIX Engagements
From industry conferences to strategic panels and taskforce collaborations, ALTIX continues to strengthen transatlantic connections by engaging with leaders across Europe and the United States.
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Building a Business in the U.S. Is Not the Same as Entering It: Inside ALTIX's U.S. Market Expansion Task Force with EACC Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
For European industrial companies, establishing a presence in the United States is an important milestone. Building a successful U.S. business is a very different challenge.
At a recent U.S. Market Expansion Task Force led by ALTIX with the European American Chamber of Commerce - EACC - Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, industrial leaders at different stages of their North American development compared what they had learned along the way — including decisions they would approach differently today.
The discussion raised a question relevant to every company pursuing long-term growth in America: What changes once you are no longer entering the U.S. market, but building a business within it?
Read the full article →
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ALTIX at the 250th Anniversary of the United States - Paris, FRANCE
On July 3, Anne Cappel, Co-Founder & CMO, had the extraordinary privilege of representing ALTIX at the residence of the U.S. Ambassador to France in Paris for the celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the United States.
It was a remarkable evening bringing together leaders from business, government, education, culture and innovation, with remarks from Charles Kushner, the U.S. Ambassador to France, honoring Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO of LVMH, and culminating in a private performance by world-renowned tenor Andrea Bocelli.
Surrounded by people and institutions connected across two countries, it was a reminder of something we see every day in business: entering a market is one thing. Becoming part of its ecosystem is another.
And that difference can determine how far an ambition ultimately goes.
Read the full article →
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Transatlantic Manufacturing in Transition: Reshaping Industrial Footprints for Resilience, Speed, and Control in the U.S. Market
For thirty years, the industrial playbook rewarded companies that left — chasing cheaper labor offshore and shipping products back to serve global markets.
That logic is now reversing on two fronts at once: U.S. manufacturers are reshoring production they once sent overseas, and international companies are racing to build real operations inside the U.S. market rather than simply sell into it.
Both movements are converging on the same hard truth — producing in the market, for the market, is not a footprint decision. It is a full system transformation, and most companies are underestimating what it actually takes.
Read the full article →
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