On the campuses of the School of Engineering of Arts et Métiers, students work with technicians, doctoral students and bachelors in real conditions, guided by professors. Xavier Kestelyn, Deputy Managing Director in charge of training, explains how they are prepared to meet the challenges of our time.
How do you identify the trends that will shape the industry of tomorrow?
XAVIER KESTELYN. Our school was created during the 1st industrial revolution to meet the challenges of the time and train in new professions. Purpose which was pursued during the 2nd, 3rd and today 4th revolutions. To anticipate developments, we are part of an ecosystem bringing together researchers who develop technologies, manufacturers who integrate them and schools who train future recruits. Arts et Métiers are thus founding members of Factory Lab, a consortium of academics (CEA List, Cetim, etc.) and industrialists (PSA, Dassault Systèmes, Naval Group, Safran, Actemium) launched in 2016, and of the Alliance for the industry of the future, created in 2015.
What are the challenges posed by the 4th industrial revolution and how do you make your engineering students aware of them?
In the factories of the 1930s, design offices designed the products. They decided, then passed the baton to the manufacturers who passed it on to the distributors. The customer was the last link in the chain. In the factory of the future, it comes first. It directs the functionalities and manufacture of the product. Interactions with customers and between different departments are constant. We no longer work in silos, but transversally. Our teachers thus teach our generalist engineers to think about the manufacturing cycle as a whole.
How does this materialize?
The engineer is no longer the one who does but the one who pilots. And in the factory of the future, he accompanies his teams towards change. These management skills are acquired through contact with reality. We have thus built on each of our campuses large technological platforms for practical work. Future engineers work there with our technicians, our doctoral students and our Bachelors in real conditions and are guided by our professors.
Finally, we train them in new technologies (data, artificial intelligence). Not to turn them into developers, but so that they understand how it works and how the industry can use these new tools, so that they are not perceived as a threat but as factors for progress.