What if the factory of the future adapted to demand on its own?

Emmanuel Macron is visiting the Sileane company in Saint-Etienne on Monday, specializing in robotics, vision and artificial intelligence, to promote the initiatives of the recent France 2030 investment plan in this area, we told the minister's office of Industry Agnès Pannier-Runacher.

In April 2019, deputies Bruno Bonnell and Catherine Simon were concerned in a report ("Robotics and intelligent systems") about a French delay in the robotization of industrial processes, a source of loss of competitiveness in key sectors.

The stake is enormous. Because alone, China, the world's factory, represents a third of the world demand in terms of industrial robots, according to the investment bank Bryan Garnier specializing in technologies.

France, which wants to relocate part of its industry, is in 7th position in the world for the number of robots, behind China, Japan, the United States, South Korea, Germany and Italy, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) based in Frankfurt, Germany.

And with machines aged on average 17 years in French industrial SMEs, Bercy is sorry to see that some of the 8.000 modernization projects that have been able to see the light of day thanks to the "industry of the future" window of the recovery plan in 2020 , did not benefit French manufacturers.

"Adaptive robotics"

This is why the France 2030 plan dedicates a budget to help the production of robots and the structuring of local projects around industrial sites.

The Sileane factory taken as a model by Emmanuel Macron on Monday practices "adaptive robotics", that is to say artificial intelligence.

About twenty years old and employing around one hundred people, it notably produces robots which condition infusion bags for the medical field, or which manage waste in the nuclear field. They are designed to handle unpredictable situations, able, if things don't go as planned, to adjust and evolve.

"We need more flexible factories, capable of reconfiguring themselves to cope with sudden variations in demand", explains Thierry Weil, advisor to the "La fabrique de l'Industrie" think tank and chairperson of the "Futures" chair. industry and labor "at Mines Paris, PSL.

Clearly, "smart factories" with assembly lines that "combine artificial intelligence, robotics and connected objects", adds Stéphane Pezeril, Innovation and Research Director of Ausy, consulting firm of the Randstad group, in the white paper of industry for 2030 published by Randstad.

"During the Covid crisis, we saw car manufacturers and suppliers manufacture respirators. They know how to assemble metal and plastic parts, electronics and fans, but they must be able to quickly reconfigure versatile machines such as robots. and rearrange production lines, ”he says.

There remains the heavy and delicate question of employment. Does this industrial automation risk "destroying" all human industrial jobs tomorrow? A Senate report "tomorrow the robots" worried about it in December 2019.

The answer is not easy. Initially, aid for industrial modernization will at least allow a 30% increase in work-study training, part of which in robotics.

Technics Développement Robotique, located in Lallaing in Hauts-de-France (20 employees) and specializing in robotization of SMEs, notably benefited from exceptional assistance to recruit four people, including three apprentices in work-study programs. in robotics or in automation and computer engineering thanks to the "one young person, one solution" device.