Nicolas Thiollière, a researcher in nuclear physics at IMT Atlantique, and his team are assessing various possibilities for the future of France’s nuclear power plants. They seek to answer the following questions: how can the quantity of plutonium in circulation in the nuclear cycle be reduced? What impacts will the choice of fuel — specifically MOx — have on nuclear …

Fabrice Flipo, Institut Mines-Télécom Business School When it comes to social and ecological concerns, many dream of reconciling the two, but few have a solution. The “yellow vests” have just provided a reminder of this fact, as they do not identify with anything offered by organized groups, whether political, union-based or even community-oriented. So what can be done? Are we …

All technology starts with a vision, a tool created to meet one of society’s objectives. Its development path is formed by both human projections and the dynamics of the transformations it generates. It is therefore important to take the time to ask ourselves what we intended to do with digital technology and what we will do with it. We must …

Editorial   What will the production lines of tomorrow look like? Over the past decades, machines have played an increasingly important role in factories. We all have an image in our minds of robotic arms moving at lightning speed and with truly superhuman precision, carrying parts that are undoubtedly too heavy for our arms. Faced with such a demonstration of …

The physical internet is a strange concept. It borrows its name from the best-known computer network, yet it bears little connection with it, other than being an inspiration for bringing together economic stakeholders and causing them to work together. The physical internet is in fact a new way of organizing the logistics network. In light of the urgent climate challenges …

With the development of delivery services, the proliferation of various means of transportation, saturated cities and mutualized goods, optimizing logistics networks is becoming so complex that humans can no longer find solutions without using intelligent software. Olivier Péton, specialized in operational research for optimizing transportation at IMT Atlantique, is seeking to answer this question: how can deliveries be made to …

Changing customer needs have cast a veil of uncertainty over the future of industrial production. To respond to these demands, production systems must be flexible. Although industry is becoming increasingly automated, a good way to provide flexibility is to reintroduce human operators. An observation that goes against current trends, presented by Xavier Delorme, an industrial management researcher at Mines Saint-Étienne …

Customers’ desire to take ownership of products is driving companies to develop more customized products. Élise Vareilles, a researcher in industrial engineering at IMT Mines Albi, works to develop interactive decision support tools. Her goal: help companies mass-produce customized goods while controlling the risks related to production. This research was presented at the IMT symposium on “Production Systems of the …

From music suggestions to help with medical diagnoses, population surveillance, university selection and professional recruitment, algorithms are everywhere, and transform our everyday lives. Sometimes, they lead us astray. At fault are the statistical, economic and cognitive biases inherent to the very nature of the current algorithms, which are supplied with massive data that may be incomplete or incorrect. However, there …

The colors of cave paintings are of great interest because they provide information about the techniques and materials used. Studying them also allows fewer sample to be taken from ancient paleolithic works. Research in colorimetry by Dominique Lafon-Pham at IMT Mines Alès provides a better definition of the colors used in paintings by our ancestors.   Mammoths, steppe lions and woolly …