What will tomorrow’s fac­to­ries look like? Benoit Eynard, Direc­tor UTC Inno­va­tions and Part­ner­ships, is Chair­man of the AIP-Prime­ca net­work for the next 4 years and hopes to include in his term of office an analy­sis on “Tomorrow’s Fac­to­ries”, an ini­tia­tive of the French Min­is­ter in charge of Pro­duc­tive Rehabilitation. 

The AIP-Prime­ca net­work, cov­er­ing from IUTs to PhD lev­els, fed­er­ates 80 high­er edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions and research estab­lish­ments through­out France. UTC was one of the found­ing mem­bers of the net­work, the aim of which is to encour­age and sup­port train­ing in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing and pro­duc­tion-automa­tion among the net­work mem­bers. The top­ics addressed include the life expectan­cy or life cycle of prod­ucts, from its design phase through to ulti­mate dis­pos­al of recy­cling, includ­ing use of robots and mecha­tron­ics. “We should pre­pare engi­neers and the asso­ciate tech­no­log­i­cal tools to accom­pa­ny the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of our indus­tries”, sum­maris­es Benoit Eynard. There are indus­tri­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the net­work Board, for exam­ple, from Das­sault Sys­tèmes and Air­bus Indus­tries. “By improv­ing our engi­neers’ train­ing and facil­i­tat­ing research for the ben­e­fit of DSMES in our net­work of sub-con­trac­tors, AIP-Prime­ca rep­re­sents an attrac­tive aca­d­e­m­ic ecosys­tem”, under­scores Bernard Boime, Pro­gramme Man­ag­er for Air­bus Group Innovations. 

Sharing knowledge and know-how in France

Thanks to AIP-Prime­ca, for exam­ple, the course con­tents are now able to inte­grate the lat­est ‘progi­ciels’ (ded­i­cat­ed soft­ware), explains Xavier Fouger, Direc­tor of aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies at 3DS (Das­sault Sys­tems). “Before they adopt a new ver­sion of a soft­ware pack­age, the estab­lish­ments and insti­tu­tions have to under­stand what may be the impact of doing so; we, for exam­ple, use AIP-Prime­ca to test our new 3D life cycle man­age­ment plat­form, called PLM-V6. Shar­ing the assess­ments proved very effi­cient, for a net­work like 3DS”. Today, PLM-V6 is an impor­tant tool for engi­neers in many spe­cial­ties and sec­tors (auto­mo­biles, aero­nau­tics, etc.). “Being able to mas­ter PLM-VG is a strong fac­tor for employ­a­bil­i­ty through­out the world”, assures Xavier Fouger. Hence the impor­tance of train­ing tomorrow’s engi­neers on the most recent ver­sions. “UTC has always had a small head­way in its ped­a­gogy and has begun to train its engi­neers in PLM-V6 even before AIP-Prime­ca has cho­sen to fol­low suit”, notes Xavier Fouger. 

International representatives

AIP-Prime­ca has 9 region­al poles or clus­ters. UTC is a mem­ber of the Paris Région (ile de France) clus­ter, as are ENS Cachan, Arts et Métiers Paris Tech, Cen­trale Paris, etc. Net­work­ing here pro­vides a far bet­ter inter­na­tion­al vis­i­bil­i­ty for the insti­tu­tions. “3DS man­ages the PLMCC pro­gramme, acronym for Prod­uct Life­cy­cle Man­age­ment Com­pe­ten­cy Cen­ter, in liai­son with the min­istries in charge of Edu­ca­tion and High­er Edu­ca­tion. The aim is to open up train­ing Cen­tres to study and use our soft­ware pack­ages in coun­tries seen as pri­or­i­ty tar­gets by these min­istries. To dis­cuss, for exam­ple, with our Chi­nese part­ner, we sent an AIP-Prime­ca lec­tur­er rep­re­sent­ing a num­ber of stu­dents equiv­a­lent to that of the TsingHua Uni­ver­si­ty, Bei­jing”, details Xavier Fouger, who is work­ing with two UTC grad­u­ates. “The stu­dents come from the AIP-Prime­ca net­work of schools often have excel­lent course pro­files”, he asserts. “More­over, we shall soon be propos­ing a ped­a­gog­i­cal nov­el­ty to AIP-Prime­ca that will enable us to val­orise France with­out cre­at­ing an imbal­ance of treat­ment among coun­ties, which is nec­es­sary when you are a multi­na­tion­al group, like Dassault” 

Interoperability of digital tools?

AIP-Prime­ca also sup­ports research activ­i­ties. “The net­work is work­ing on the con­cept and fea­si­bil­i­ty of inter­op­er­abil­i­ty of dig­i­tal tools, which have now become essen­tial in almost every indus­tri­al process and in all the phase of a product’s life cycle. Mas­ter­ing these tools is con­ducive to bet­ter com­pet­i­tiv­i­ty. So how can we assure inter­op­er­abil­i­ty? Imple­ment­ing com­mon inter­faces has become a real chal­lenge for indus­tri­al­ists and financiers, and is a con­cern shared by numer­ous sec­tors of activ­i­ty. We are work­ing here in the frame­work of research assign­ments with var­i­ous engi­neer­ing schools in the Paris region clus­ter”, details Bernard Boime, adding “There will be plen­ty of work for engi­neers and tech­ni­cians in this field, both with the indus­tries as users and at the soft­ware edi­tors”. In the frame­work of the the­mat­ic of Tomorrow’s Fac­to­ries, AIP –Prime­ca is study­ing the con­cepts of Eco-design and vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR). “We shall accom­pa­ny the theme of indus­tri­al reha­bil­i­ta­tion with ANR at the nation­al lev­el in France and with EFFRA in Europe”, under­scores Bernard Eynard. “We shall pri­or­i­tize high added val­ue and high lev­el tech­ni­cal con­tent and will devel­op fac­to­ry-train­ing cen­tres so that young peo­ple can see just how attrac­tive a fac­to­ry may be tomor­row. For exam­ple, AUP-Prime­ca will be con­tribut­ing some 50% of the VR equip­ment to be installed at UTC”. 

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