Schneider Electric is a global leading company in the automation and electrical distribution business. Main development sites of Schneider Electric Industrial Automation are in France, Germany and USA. It combines the Telemecanique, SquareD, Modicon and former AEG master brands of the parent company Schneider Electric Industries. The Schneider Electric Industrial Automation brands offer its target industrial process end users and OEM customers superior products and services throughout their automation journey. Currently Schneider Electric Industries is employing 64 000 people world wide with revenues of about 6 billion Euro. Industrial Automation as part of Schneider Electric Industries is employing around 2000 People. Key customers like DaimlerChrysler, Coca Cola, VW, Mars, Opel, Merck, General Motors, Ford, BASF, Thyssen, Burton using the competencies and project experiences in the automation and electrical distribution business of Schneider Electric Industrial Automation. Innovative technologies like PC based control systems are developed and driven by Schneider Electric Industrial Automation as well as contributions to international standards for automation like IEC 61131 and IEC 61499. Further Schneider Electric Industrial Automation is leading in the combination of IT and industrial automation, in the usage of internet based protocols and in development of agent-oriented software for flexible control systems.

The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft is the leading contract organisation for applied research in Germany. Currently the portfolio of competencies comprises more than 50 institutes mainly in Germany but also in the US and Asia. With 11000 employees the total annual budget reaches 710 mio €. Approximately 40 % of the turnover is based on direct contract research for industrial customers.

The IPA with more than 200 employees is the largest Fraunhofer Institute located in Stuttgart, Germany. The institute offers contract research and industrial developments in three activity fields:

• Corporate Management
• Automation
• Manufacturing Technologies

In these business areas the IPA achieves an annual turnover of more than 30 mio € in which approximately 50 % are in contract research for industry.

In this project proposal the department Robot Systems of the Automation division in IPA participates. Within this division 68 employees develop innovative automation systems for a variety of applications:

• Manufacturing
• Trade
• Services
• Health-care
• Construction equipment
• Transport and Traffic
• Entertainment

The University of Warwick is one of the nation’s top research universities, distinguished by its commitment to improving the human condition through advanced science and technology. The Warwick Manufacturing Group, within the School of Engineering is one of the largest academically based groups in Europe. The Faculty of WMG is exceptionally "research-active" and encompassed a wide-ranging theme of activities from plastics to ebusiness. A key feature of research at WMG is its close connection to the needs of business. Many of the projects involve partners from industry. At the same time, the Faculty is prolific in its contribution to the scholarly and pedagogical literature of our various fields including the publication of books and monographs many of which have been routinely adopted by faculty in other academic programs throughout the country and around the world. A substantial amount of research in the School is conducted within the confines of various "research centres".

INRIA (National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control) is a French public-sector scientific and technological institute operating under the dual authority of the Ministry of Research and the Ministry of Industry. INRIA missions are "to undertake basic and applied research, to design experimental systems, to ensure technology and knowledge transfer, to organise international scientific exchanges, to carry out scientific assessments, and to contribute to standardisation".

The research carried out at INRIA brings together experts from the fields of computer science and applied mathematics covering the following areas: Networks and Systems; Software Engineering and Symbolic Computing; Man-Machine Interaction; Image Processing, Data Management, Knowledge Systems; Simulation and Optimisation of Complex Systems.

INRIA gathers in its premises around 2 100 persons including 1 600 scientists, many of which belong to partner organisations (CNRS, industrial labs, universities) and are assigned to work in common "projects". On INRIA budget, around 500 full-time equivalent R&D positions can be accounted for. A large number of INRIA senior researchers are involved in teaching and their PhD students (about 550) prepare their thesis within the different INRIA research projects (currently 74).

The Research Laboratory "Génie de Production" belongs to the National Engineering School of Tarbes, France. It is recognised by the French CNRS as an "équipe d'accueil" (EA n°1905) and is composed of 35 senior researchers, 25 PhD students and 6 technical staff divided into three teams: Material Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Integrated Manufacturing.

The Computer Integrated Manufacturing team groups 15 senior researchers and 14 PhD students and leads several research projects relevant to the "I*PROMS " themes. The common objective of these studies is to improve the productivity, quality, flexibility and reactivity of the manufacturing processes and systems by a better use of information and knowledge. Two main types of methods are considered in that purpose: analytical control methods when models of the processes are available, and artificial-intelligence based methods when expert knowledge regarding the system is available. The CIM team has especially conducted researches in the following areas:

Model-based monitoring and control accommodation of Machine Tools

The machining process is a complex phenomenon which depends on the material, on the cutting operation, on the machine and on the cutting tool. An efficiently controlled system should be able to use information regarding various these various aspects. Techniques have been developed for an efficient on-line monitoring systems, using a cutting process model integrating tool wear, flexion and chatter in High Speed Machining (a PhD is in progress on this subject with Turbomeca).

Mobile robots for reconfigurable manufacturing systems

For increasing the flexibility of manufacturing systems, it will shortly be required to be able to reconfigure a workshop according to a short term demand. In that purpose, the team is performing research on mobile robots for manufacturing activities (ROBEA I and II projects, supported by the French CNRS).

Distributed decision making for intelligent machines supervision

Communication and decision capabilities can be added to the functional layer provided by smart sensors and actuators by defining cooperation scenarios. The multi-agent paradigm is an efficient way to implement empirical operational knowledge when accurate models of the process are not available: a global architecture for cooperation of smart sensors and actuators has so been suggested, implemented and tested in a multi-agent environment.

Management of the demand uncertainty in Supply Chains

The customers demand being more and more uncertain, it is important that production management techniques allow to explicitly deal with this uncertainty all along the Supply Chain. A method has been suggested for allowing to take into account expert knowledge for modelling this uncertainty thanks to fuzzy logic, then to propagate this uncertainty all along the planning levels. This should allow the decision makers to have a better image of the various situations that may occur in the near future, on the points of views of material requirement planning and possible load (project PICHALOG, supported by the CNRS).

Knowledge Engineering for manufacturing Systems

The major point in order to improve the behaviour of manufacturing systems is to be able to identify, structure, store and re-use the knowledge available in the companies. In that purpose, several studies have been launched in companies on subjects like Case-based reasoning, return on experiment or identification of human resource's roles, competence and knowledge in decisional processes (PhD with Alstom).