Adeo streamlines its packaging design and validation workflow with DALIM

Adeo - How to produce 10,000 product packaging items a year!

DIY powerhouse Adeo creates or updates close to 10000 product packaging items every year, for products sold in its retail outlets across 14 countries. With many contributors involved, a robust validation workflow is required to track packaging versions accurately and avoid errors. Dalim took up the challenge.

If you’re passionate about DIYing in your home or garden, Adeo is your version of Disneyland. You may not be familiar with the name of the holding company but you sure know its retail brands: Leroy Merlin, Weldom, Bricoman, Saint-Maclou, Kbane, to name a few. Adeo’s legacy brand is Leroy Merlin, a household name in France with over 100 years of existence. Adeo itself was created in 2007 as a holding company when Leroy Merlin started expanding internationally and other brands also came onboard. Today, Adeo has established its different brands of DIY retail outlets across Europe. The Group also expanded into South Africa and Brazil, serving a total of 500 million DIY enthusiasts worldwide in both its stores and through its online marketplace launched four years ago.

Securing packaging production

Within the organisation, Adeo Services provides centralized support functions to all Group entities. In particular, Adeo Services mutualizes digital tools for use across the organization. Within Adeo Services, Adeo Production manages a collection of private label brands which are distributed throughout the network, such as Inspire for lighting fixtures or Luxens for paints and varnishes. These corporate brands bring together almost 60000 product references and make up for 30% of the Group’s revenue.

"For these company-owned brands, we design the products, shoot photos, create packaging material and produce instruction leaflets," says Guillaume Soulié, project leader at Adeo Services.

In 2013, the team was looking for a reliable solution to manage the validation workflow of the packaging items designed for the Group’s private label brands. 

"The packaging artwork typically includes photos or illustrations, a product description, as well as pictograms and other regulatory safety mentions", explains Guillaume Soulié.

"We bring all these elements together, create the artwork and circulate it across several services for approval on technical, marketing and regulatory aspects, all this in several languages. A technical engineer will check the size of the flatbed packaging fits the cardboard stock we print on. A product engineer will make sure the product description is correct. A quality engineer will verify that the mandatory regulatory information is present and up to date, including country-specific data. This means a packaging item typically needs to get the green light from six or seven people across the organization". 

The process need to be robust enough to avoid any loopholes and make sure all issues are identified and dealt with upstream.

"We benchmarked a number of software solutions and Dalim came out as the best fit", remembers Guillaume Soulié.

"What tipped the balance is the annotation features, its ability to track versions and ultimately organize a reliable validation process".

Bringing everyone around the table

Adeo’s Dalim implementation is called Visuall. The tool rolled out in 2013 quickly gained traction, with more and more Adeo employees at different business units coming onboard.

The workflow is as follows:

• Packaging items are designed and laid out using Adobe software.

• The Adobe native files are then included into the Dalim workflow for display, annotation, validation and version tracking.

• All artwork elements (InDesign or Illustrator files, as well as images, pictograms, texts, etc) are stored in Dalim.

• The workflow steps, revisions, annotations, review and approval & outputs are all completed inside Dalim.

• The final layouts are exported as PDF files and transferred to the printing company in charge.

• Additional items were also gradually included in Visual, such as images with text overlays.

However, items designed for use with Adeo’s web sites, as opposed to packaging production, are maintained within a separate digital asset management (DAM) system.

"We wanted to keep things separate and not rely on one single product for all our needs", explains Guillaume Soulié.

"It was just a question of not putting all our eggs in the same basket".

Yet, Visuall’s robust and easy-to-use workflow attracted users both from within the organization and outside, such as third-party industrial companies to which Adeo outsources the production of its private label products, as well as design agencies and freelance photographers or artists.

Close to 600 users are now using Visuall at every step of the packaging and instruction leaflet production process.

Implementing new features

As Visuall was becoming more and more central in Adeo Production’s day-to-day operation, new requirements emerged. Several new features were implemented over time. Three years ago, Adeo rolled out a feature that exports data from Visuall into a Business Intelligence tool, allowing to generate KPIs. Now the company has accurate statistics on the number of packaging items produced & images stored, etc.

"We relied on Dalim as our integration partner", explains Guillaume Soulié.

Using the Dalim API, their team was able to connect Visuall to our third party tool to allow a seamless flow of all the required data. 

"Dalim’s API was instrumental in connecting Visuall to the PIM software we use to keep track of all product data".

Other developments followed. "In 2023, we set up a preflighting module", says Guillaume Soulié.

"The module automatically checks all files before they are sent to the printing company. This way, we can spot any inconsistency upstream and avoid potential down time due to files going back and forth between our services and the print room".

Later, in 2024, Adeo Production brought 3D into the game.

"We produce wireframe 3D models for a number of products from our private label brands using SolidWorks" (*), says Guillaume Soulié.

"The SolidWorks files can now be parsed by a converter as they are brought into Visuall and added to the database. This means our marketing teams can access these wireframe representations and use them to build a photomontage showing the product in situation over a photo backdrop".

The team is currently collecting as many 3D representations as possible from different internal sources, for all product categories.

"Our aim is to manage these resources centrally and allow our different business units to access each other’s images", underscores Guillaume Soulié.

(*) A popular CAD software tool by France’s Dassault Systèmes

Managing pictograms

Another project Adeo started in 2024 is the creation of a database, bringing together all pictograms used on product packaging and leaflets.

"We want to bring all our pictograms into one location, to avoid duplicates and make sure graphics on an artist’s hard drive don’t get lost when they move on to a different project", explains Guillaume Soulié.

"This also helps track every pictogram’s compliance with evolving regulations. Additionally, whenever regulations do change, we want to know which pictograms are concerned and which product packages need to be updated. Our new pictogram database on Visuall allows that".

Looking forward, Adeo is also working on automating the transfer of items from Dalim to the separate DAM system used for Adeo’s web sites.

"Dalim’s API has proven useful to bring together Visuall and all our other software tools", underscores Guillaume Soulié.

"This allows for a lot of flexibility in getting our tools to work together seamlessly. And we expect to have a working prototype of the automated export interface very soon".

Working hand-in-hand

Adeo’s experience with Dalim is a telling example of how a company starts out with one main implementation serving one main requirement and gradually adds new features as they realize how much the product can simplify or improve their internal processes. 
Dalim also stands out as a software technology that stays up to date with current IT trends. This includes cybersecurity and running over a cloud infrastructure.

"Every year, we carry out a cybersecurity assessment of our entire software stack", says Guillaume Soulié.

"Even though Dalim is a very secure product out of the box, their team is quick to address any new vulnerabilities that are identified and reported". "Also, with Visuall running on a cloud architecture, Dalim’s efforts to provide state of the art cloud features is particularly of value to us".