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Usually, the first question I must answer when I meet with new people is “What are you doing Olivier?”. The short answer then is that I have created my company, named KAKUSHIN, in 2021 and that I am providing industrial companies with some consultancy services. Unfortunately, this is not enough to understand what my real job is, so before explaining it with more details, the best is to start with a brief overview of my background and history.

My academic background is a PhD in Material Science in the field of Powder Metallurgy and high temperature corrosion together with 2 main industrial partners: Saint-Gobain and Aubert & Duval. After my PhD, I spent 1 year at the Business School of Toulouse, following a master’s degree in management of Innovation and Technology.

My working experience started then in the Steel industry with a traineeship in the Sales Division of the Stainless-Steel branch of Usinor, and in 1999 I joined the French Federation of Steel, where I worked as Project Manager for developing web-based platforms to share technical information with steel users. My first experience with Refractory materials came in 2003, when I joined the Global Purchasing Team of Arcelor where I spent 8 years dealing with Refractory procurement. During this long period, I had several responsibilities covering the whole scope of Refractories worldwide with more than 70 Steel Plants as internal customers. In 2011, I took over the responsibility of the Mill Services Team at ArcelorMittal, negotiating with my team major Service contracts worldwide for Slag treatment, Scrap yard management, heavy internal transport, and refractory Service. In 2013, I moved to the other side of the table, taking the role of business development for a family-owned Refractory Group, offering bricks, monolithic and installation services. After 2 intense years travelling the world to develop customers relations I joined an American Service Group as CEO of their French operations, and later taking over Belgian, South-African and Abu Dhabi subsidiaries.

After the COVID crisis, I decided to operate a major transition in my career and in 2021 I created my own company, KAKUSHIN, to offer independent consultancy services to the industry. And to focus my activity on innovation (back to the origins), I followed in Parallel a very rich Executive master’s in technology and Innovation at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. For 14 months, I have had the privilege to hear lectures from the major experts in many innovative technologies such as AI, Smart Grids, Robotics, IoT, Laser, Aerospace, autonomous vehicle, and many others… I have also been part of a very ambitious team project with the goal to lower the environmental footprint of the luxury leather industry.

So, coming back to my today activity, KAKUSHIN (means for Innovation in Japanese) is assisting industrial companies in their development and innovation processes. In the last 4 years, I have helped several customers to develop Procurement structure and process, to set up long term strategy including M&A, to develop new markets, to transform the organization and to integrate digital processes, etc…

In conclusion, from my diverse experiences I have developed a holistic view of the value chain that allows me to bring a 360° analysis of my customer’s issues, and some “out of the box” innovative approaches.

Kakushin - LinkedIn

Olivier Kessler - LinkedIn