This topic has been chosen among the projects envisaged in the last research roadmap as a prospective theme for our team. It arose primarily from repeated requests of our industrial partners. Over time, early work on tolerancing and dimensional metrology led us to become interested in product lifecycles, and more specifically in the control of the geometric quality right from the design and manufacturing stages. We have had to study product design methods and manufacturing and assembly processes in order to meet today's needs of engineering for the integration of new constraints in terms of robustness, safety or product complexity as early as possible. We studied existing theories, methods and design tools in order to formalize new approaches, which would take into account these requirements. We also considered the use of performance criteria other than quality to evaluate solutions.


More precisely, our work revolves around four research projects:

• The specification of tolerances as early as possible in the design process and the evaluation of the robustness of the solution,
• The innovative design of farm equipment to ensure operator safety,
• Research toward new concepts and new product/process design methods for the modular installation of aeronautic systems,
• Research toward innovative, sustainable and high-performance systems for automotive vehicle assembly.