The 5 challenges facing the IMAF Labex (Agile Manufacturing Engineering of the Future)

The Labex will focus on five challenges: 

Challenge No. 1: Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS)

To facilitate the transition to MaaS by providing practical tools to create a network of open, modular, agile and circular industries at national and local levels.

Challenge No. 1 of the LabEx IMAF focuses on Manufacturing as a Service (MaaS), a model in which reconfigurable production systems could be shared amongst several manufacturers according to their needs.

Today, industrial facilities are generally designed to meet a specific company’s requirements. Adapting them to new needs often requires significant modifications, physical testing and lengthy, costly validation phases. To enable several companies to use the same production system in succession, it is therefore necessary to develop solutions that can be reconfigured quickly, reliably and securely.

Researchers at LabEx IMAF have chosen the chemical industry as their field of application. This sector is subject to stringent safety, quality and regulatory constraints, which make the reconfiguration of production systems particularly complex. However, new processes that are more compact, modular and responsive are now opening up interesting prospects.

Against this backdrop, Inès Dib’s PhD thesis (a doctoral student at Centrale Nantes) explores the use of digital twins to support the reconfiguration of production systems. The aim is to enable manufacturers to virtually test different configurations before implementing them in practice, in order to predict performance, minimise physical testing and facilitate the deployment of reconfigurable manufacturing systems.

Led by Catherine Da Cunha, Professor of Industrial Engineering (LS2N), and François-Xavier Felpin, Professor of Chemistry (CEISAM), this project aims to lay the foundations for the reconfigurable manufacturing systems of the future, capable of being shared amongst several manufacturers and adapted to their needs.

Challenge No. 2: Agile and cost-effective industrial robotics

To design a new generation of scalable, frugal and autonomous robots, equipped with advanced perception, reasoning and locomotion capabilities, capable of interacting safely with humans in dynamic, large-scale and hostile environments.

Project leaders: Andrea CHERUBINI (Professor at Centrale Nantes, LS2N/RoMaS) Vincent FREMONT (Professor at Centrale Nantes, LS2N/ARMEN)

Challenge No. 3: Digital twins

To develop comprehensive and operational digital twins to anticipate, manage and control quality, industrial performance, and impacts on the environment and operators.

Project leaders:  Matthieu RAUCH (Full Professor at Centrale Nantes, GeM/RAPMAN) Mathieu RITOU (Professor at the University of Nantes, LS2N/RoMaS)

Challenge No. 4: Human-Machine Collaboration

To design human-centred factories that facilitate cooperation between humans and machines, by encouraging the transfer of skills from the operator to the robot in order to improve operators’ performance and comfort.

Project leaders:  Patrick LE CALLET (Professor at the University of Nantes, LS2N/IPI) Franck MARS (CNRS Research Director, LS2N/PACCE)

Challenge No. 5: Agile and Autonomous Industrial Processes

Develop advanced industrial processes to produce metallic, chemical, polymer and composite materials in a more flexible, on-demand and sustainable manner.

Project leaders: Nadine ALLANIC (Professor, Nantes University, GEPEA/OSE) Christophe BINETRUY (Professor, Centrale Nantes, GeM/DURPO)