Benoît Rapidel, founder of brōps

​

Benoît Rapidel doesn’t just talk about operational improvement, he builds systems that last. With a background that spans live performance tech, engineering design, and industrial operations, he brings 15+ years of experience solving hard problems where pressure is high and failure is expensive.
He founded brōps to help teams, from dev orgs to manufacturing floors, cut friction, align workflows, and actually enjoy the way they work.

From Backstage to Boardroom

Benoît started his career in the most chaotic production environment imaginable: the opera.
At the Opéra de Lyon, he designed complete set design for multiple in-house productions, where  design requirements were filled with creativity and real/life constraints harsh. Execution had to be flawless and on time, fixes meant oftentime burning the midnight oil. It was there he learned the power of systems that make creative and technical teams click.

That mindset shaped his next venture: as Co-Founder and CTO of ExMachina, he led the development of motorized automation systems for opera productions and theater shows across France and Belgium. He co-invented a patented solution that’s still in active use today at both De Munt / La Monnaie and the Opéra de Lyon, promoting open-source technology to escape tool-jail where tools are often replaced whenever that smart person is sailing to new horizons.

At ShowTex Belgium, Benoît was brought in to restructure and modernize the product engineering team. He introduced OnShape, a Git-style cloud-based CAD platform, and overhauled the way the team worked, from org structure to product development pipelines to quality control workflows. His approach reshaped the entire product development cycle. From early-stage concept work, manufacturing folders to final user documentation, he established practical systems that turned vague ideas into manufacturable, shippable products. He didn’t just plug in new software, he embedded real working habits: proper version control, structured feedback loops, and quality control systems that caught mistakes before they reached production. Tools stopped being a burden and started driving progress. He didn’t just fix process gaps; he designed a system that scaled across teams and time zones.

Then, as Director of Operations for ShowTex North America, he took on the full operational stack: project management, manufacturing, warehousing, and international transport. He rolled out live dashboards, built internal tooling for production tracking and transport booking, and gave the team actual visibility across order flows and resource planning. No more information stuck in email threads or lost in Excel hell.

“A tool shouldn't be another layer added, it should be a brick that becomes cemented into the process. Only then the people will gain the incentive to drive the change across their team.”

Why brōps

Benoît founded brōps to help growing organizations move like great ones. That means designing workflows around how people actually work, not how some framework says they should. Whether he’s coaching a dev team stuck in ticket churn or a warehouse team struggling with hand-offs, the goal is always the same:
​less friction, more clarity, better flow.

With his hands-on approach, Benoît doesn't pitch and fly. He gets inside the system, listens to the people in it, and works side-by-side to build or implement tools, processes, and habits that embed change, without breaking what already works.