Grenoble INP – Industrial Engineering, celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. How was this school born?
In 1990, a new type of school was created in Grenoble around an original idea, at the request of industrialists, who noted that certain professions were evolving and were not covered by Training. They wanted to train engineers to increase the overall performance of industrial activity and not for a particular technology. We train engineers who have transversal professions, who have a global vision of what is happening in a company, with the aim of making technical decisions. To the initial concepts, we added the fact of knowing how to take into account the consumption of resources and environmental impacts. The second fundamental point of the creation text was to train citizen engineers: an aspect that is making a strong comeback today. In terms of training, this translates into a multidisciplinary aspect, which combines technical subjects with human and social sciences: economics, sociology of organizations and management.
The school was born from the need of industrialists. What is the place of the company today?
It is part of the training. Since 1990, part of the training has been done within companies, obviously through internships, but also through the organization of audits of industrial organizations. Students must be confronted with the complexity of organizations, to know how to make a relevant decision.
Since the creation of the school, we have had a group of industrialists from Merlin-Gérin, HP, and even Renaut who are still present today. We have also joined ST Micro, BD, Caterpillar… Large groups still well established in Grenoble.
What are the new challenges for the industry?
They are obviously on socio-ecological transitions. All the young people want to work on these subjects. The two professions for which we prepare students: product designer and supply chain management, have since the start of the academic year doubled by the challenges to be taken up at 21th century. The first is the ecological transition. The second, essential, is data management. Grenoble is one of the four artificial intelligence institutes in France, and among the three fields of application selected, there is that on the industry of the future. The third challenge is the design of organizations and management.
The industry of the future and the new industry organizations are subjects for large companies, but are they also applicable within industrial VSE-SMEs?
Yes. Precisely, we ensure that the training of our students is also done in SMEs. The UIMM of Ain is also part of the companies of our “club”. And we have taken this desire even further, since we have just created with this UIMM from Ain, an industrial chair, which will be studying the digital transformation of SMEs. Business leaders must understand that they will not be able to switch to 4.0 without an information system. This chair highlights four themes: the digital offer, additive manufacturing (we focus on remanufacturing and process development), artificial intelligence, and environmental aspects.
At the same time, we are in the process of setting up another industrial chair, which has not yet been completed, and this time in partnership with IAE Grenoble. This time, we will question the engineer and the manager, with the object of study: Man in Industry 4.0.
You have just completed the work of A2I: Intelligent Workshops for Industry, which aims to become the benchmark university campus for the industry of the future. What is it about ?
95% of the work is completed. It will house the Grenoble INP showroom in particular. The object is indeed the “industry of the future” and not “industry 4.0”. This is a small provocation on our part, which starts from the definition that 4.0 includes digital technologies that allow industrial processes to evolve. But 4.0 forces us to reorganize ourselves differently, to reorganize the processes. The installation of Cobot in factories, or additive manufacturing, are possible processes because there is 4.0, but which oblige to rethink activities, to simplify the production chain.
The A2I will be an experimental center for 4.0 technologies in production. For the training of students, we have a factory: fragmented obviously, but entire, to train students in an environment equivalent to industrial reality.
For manufacturers, it is also a place where we can effectively measure the performance of solutions. We can build the use of technologies, and define in which cases a technology makes it possible to gain in productivity or in quality, and in which cases it is of the order of the “gadget”. Integrating technologies into industrial processes is the challenge of industrial engineering.
For 18 months, we have witnessed a rise in the will to reindustrialize. That was the focus of the bulk of the stimulus package. This will be one of the major subjects of the France 2030 plan. How do you see this “revelation”?
We are not discovering the need to reindustrialize. At school, we were wrong from the start when it came to immersing the desire for fabless, which supported a model where innovation would be made in France and Europe, and production in Asia. But you can’t design without mastering production.
Today, the issue of reindustrialization is less that of the return of production companies, than that of producing close to the markets. We must produce in Europe what is consumed in Europe. We call in fact “reindustrialisation” the stop of the discourse which consists in saying to produce in China. We are only correcting the nonsense.
This logic is still part of a context where the supply chain would also be closer, with a supply of raw materials that would also be more local …
Yes. On relocation there are several topics. Certain that we have mastered: skills, energy… are all subjects that we know how to deal with in Europe. The difficulty is the materials, because there are few available in Europe. My vision for the future is that we will no longer have production companies, but reproduction companies. That is to say that we will have to manage to never lose the material at our disposal: we recycle material, we repair, we transform the material thanks to additive manufacturing … We will only remake from of things already manufactured, to keep the recycled material in Europe.
Behind the scenes:
At the end of the interview, we benefited from a guided tour of the recently built and upgraded platforms: organization of production sites, virtual and augmented reality, industrial production, additive production… So much equipment available to students.
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