Industry of the future: CentraleSupélec, a historic player

Frédérique Vidal, Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, visited CEA LIST (Nano Innov – Saclay) as part of the launch of France 2030, with 30 billion euros deployed over 5 years, aimed at developing industrial competitiveness and future technologies.

Olivier Gicquel, Director of Training at CentraleSupélec, was present. He presented to the Minister the School's activities in the field of of the industry of the future (training/research) within the Paris-Saclay ecosystem and the School of the Industry of the Future project led by CentraleSupélec alongside the CEA. The idea adopted: the CEA leads the research/transfer part of an acceleration platform while CentraleSupélec, as well as other academic partners, contribute their expertise in terms of skills.

As a reminder, CentraleSupélec is a historic and major player in the development of an industry that is always looking to the future in an increasingly competitive context and increasingly constrained by the scarcity of resources. It relies on fundamental disciplines that constitute its core business: control, signal processing and telecommunications, industrial engineering and process engineering, physics and physical chemistry, mathematics and computer science. For several years, research and teaching teams from all these disciplines have been involved in advancing knowledge and promoting to students the issues associated with the industry of the future.

As a priority, the training involves:

• Make all the professions in the industry of the future, from technician to engineer, more attractive for young people, including young women, and facilitate their choice of initial training (CAP, Bac Pro, Professional License, Master, Doctorate).

• Structuring the possibilities in terms of certified continuing training to increase the appetite of the staff of SMEs, SMIs and ETIs for better qualifications and to strengthen the maturity of companies in order to better adapt their production tools, their organizations and their staff to the challenges of competitiveness

• Develop professional integration from the undergraduate level (DUT/BUT/Licence) and demonstrate the value of professional paths built on short initial training, supplemented at key moments in the career by continuing training leading to a diploma.

• Increase the number of continuing training courses adapted to the deployment of Industry 4.0 by identifying training needs as closely as possible to demand

• Expand the number of specialized ad-hoc training courses to cover the scope of demand (in-house training, MOOCs, SPOCs, webinars, serious games, nuggets, etc.), particularly on very specific subjects. This is a major challenge for training organizations, requiring responsiveness, adaptability, flexibility in the teaching materials used, but also agility in educational design.

The factory of the future is also being designed in our research laboratories in collaboration with manufacturers: digital, robotics, AI... without forgetting the need for training.