Company of the future and digital, energy and ecological transitions

The digital, energy and ecological transitions are having a profound impact on industrial manufacturing and process companies in terms of their management methods, the design of their plants and workshops, and their relationship with society in general.

The "digital revolution" has been made possible by the power of computers, which doubles every 18 months according to Moore's Law. It is based on the excessive use of the Internet and a wide variety of sensors, and on the possibility of virtually instantaneous worldwide transfer of huge masses of data (Data), whether text, photos, maps, sounds, videos, etc., and of processing them using increasingly sophisticated algorithms.

Added to this is the unbridled competition resulting from globalization, the rise of China, the imbalances caused by disparities in labor costs, the availability of certain strategic raw materials (copper, lithium, rare earths, etc.), and the emergence of shale gas and oil, which in just a few years have put the United States on a par with Saudi Arabia in terms of oil production, after decades of dependence.

In the space of a few years, new terms have appeared: factory of the future, factory 4.0, e-factory, depending on the country, to take account of this new industrial revolution, the fourth, which most authors date from the 1990s. Business is once again recognized as a source of wealth, as Adam Smith advocated as early as 1776 in his book "The Wealth of Nations", and Technology as an economic weapon. It's time to produce! It's all about being "first on the market". Global competition is a must.

By neglecting its production facilities, France has "de-industrialized": forced to import, it has only widened its trade deficit. The COVID 19 pandemic revealed structural weaknesses, a lack of robustness due to dependence on other countries, particularly Asian ones. France is trying to win back its markets by supporting its research and start-ups, and investing in future investment plans (PIA). Jobs depend on it.

In order to survive, the company is forced to review its industrial strategy and all its functions:

• Research and Innovation (R&I), which is increasingly replacing Research and Development (R&D): in what follows we will keep the usual term R&D ;

• Project engineering ;

• operations management, with operators freed from tedious tasks, who have become more observers and controllers of machines than actors;

• its relationship with increasingly well-informed customers who want "sustainable" organic and natural products, and want to know where they come from, how they're...