Integrated systems :
product / process team

Integrated engineering and multidisciplinary collaboration

One of the major issues at the heart of the chal­lenge of the fac­to­ry of the future is the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the val­ue chain and busi­ness processes.

To meet this chal­lenge, our skills enable us to strength­en our devel­op­ment of dig­i­tal mod­els for the inte­gra­tion of the design-indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion chain or prod­uct-process life­cy­cle man­age­ment. These mod­els make use of advanced data struc­tures that facil­i­tate user access to prod­uct and process design information.

The team is also study­ing the process­es for cre­at­ing and using this data. The aim is to organ­ise and struc­ture the col­lab­o­ra­tion process by propos­ing oper­a­tional indi­ca­tors for agile deci­sion-mak­ing in design and indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion projects.

Robust engineering and control of variability

In the design and indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion phase, robust engi­neer­ing of mechan­i­cal sys­tems focus­es on enrich­ing the mod­el iden­ti­fi­ca­tion meth­ods nec­es­sary for the imple­men­ta­tion of an engi­neer­ing process based on the joint use of phys­i­cal and sta­tis­ti­cal models.

In this con­text, we are inter­est­ed in strate­gies for devel­op­ing meta-mod­els in order to replace the numer­i­cal mod­el with a sim­pli­fied mod­el that meets pre­dic­tive requirements.

The elab­o­ra­tion of meta-mod­els involves a phase of def­i­n­i­tion of their struc­ture and a phase of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of their para­me­ters. This iden­ti­fi­ca­tion stage, asso­ci­at­ed with opti­mi­sa­tion approach­es, allows the devel­op­ment of robust design solutions.

In the pro­duc­tion and main­te­nance phase, the robust­ness of a prod­uct can­not be guar­an­teed with­out con­trol­ling the vari­abil­i­ty of the man­u­fac­tur­ing process. It is there­fore essen­tial, in the qual­i­fi­ca­tion or pro­duc­tion phase, to reduce and lim­it as much as pos­si­ble the vari­abil­i­ty induced by man­u­fac­tur­ing oper­a­tions. Our approach aims at pro­vid­ing meth­ods and mod­els allow­ing to indus­tri­alise prod­ucts and to pilot process­es in a mul­ti­vari­ate pro­duc­tion context.

As far as main­te­nance oper­a­tions are con­cerned, deci­sion rules help define which main­te­nance actions to per­form and how to re-plan man­u­fac­tur­ing, while ensur­ing the lev­el of per­for­mance of the pro­duc­tion system.

Decision support and steering in design and industrialisation

This theme aims to help deci­sion-mak­ing and steer­ing in design and indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion. The inte­gra­tion of engi­neer­ing mod­els and activ­i­ties relat­ed to the life cycle pro­vides the deci­sion-mak­ing frame­work for the spec­i­fi­ca­tion and def­i­n­i­tion of para­me­ters, indi­ca­tors and deci­sion vari­ables used in design and industrialisation.

All of these ele­ments, con­sol­i­dat­ed, ver­i­fied and val­i­dat­ed by con­trol­ling vari­abil­i­ty and imple­ment­ing reli­able mod­els for robust prod­uct and process engi­neer­ing, are intend­ed to assist deci­sion-mak­ing and the agile man­age­ment of design projects and indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion operations.

Integration and management of heterogeneous data

This theme con­cerns the improve­ment of exchanges and the man­age­ment of tech­ni­cal data (includ­ing CAD, CAE, CAM mod­els, etc.) result­ing from busi­ness and mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary expertise.

This requires rethink­ing approach­es to infor­ma­tion shar­ing between engi­neer­ing play­ers and strength­en­ing the inter­op­er­abil­i­ty of the soft­ware appli­ca­tions and dig­i­tal archi­tec­tures implemented.

The response to these locks calls for the def­i­n­i­tion of new mod­els and stan­dards while con­sid­er­ing their method­olog­i­cal inte­gra­tion into the life cycle of prod­ucts and processes.