Proceedings of Virtual Concept 2006 Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, November 26th – December 1st, 2006

Original Article

Between heritage and Industrial Engineering, a new life for old products: virtuality Florent Laroche 1 2 3, Alain Bernard 1, Michel Cotte 2 3

(1) : Institut de Recherche en Communications et Cybernétique de Nantes, Ecole Centrale, Nantes, France +33 2 40 37 69 53 E-mail : {florent.laroche, alain.bernard}@irccyn.ec-nantes.fr

(2) : Institut de l'Homme et de la Technologie, Ecole Polytechnique, Nantes, France +33 2 51 85 74 05 E-mail : {michel.cotte}@univ-nantes.fr

(3) : Centre François Viète d'histoire des sciences et des techniques, Université, Nantes, France

Abstract: All along history, humans have always invented, created to improve their standard of living. Many machines have been built, sometimes simple and others very complex. In order to achieve the best results for customers, machines, industrial plants and humans are moved, displaced and replaced. It is the global humanity technical knowledge that disappears. Our approach proposes a new kind of finality: as saving and maintaining physical object cost a lot for museums, and sometimes dismantling is impossible as the machine falls in ruin, we propose to preserve it as a numerical object. The aim of this research is to define the global process and technologies that have to be used for conserving this heritage: from the digitalization of the physical object to its valorization thanks to virtual reality technologies (for museums, experts or didactic engineering…). We detail the interoperability chain that must be followed to create the Digital Heritage Reference Model (a new reference model for museum conservatives). Moreover, thanks to examples, we explain the object lifecycle concept associated to the anthropological know-how at the intersection of Industrial Engineering Sciences and Social Sciences.

But the conservation of the technical heritage encounters several major difficulties issued mainly from: a no-sensitizing of industrial world regarding the value of their technical heritage and the interest about the possibilities of heritage backup; financial difficulties to conserve, to maintain and to ensure the transportation of large size objects; a human difficulty due to the lack and the loss of the user’s consciousness and/or the disappearance of the machine manufacturers. Our approach deals with a mixing of two scientific communities: industrial engineering and history but more precisely technical history as we are speaking about industries and machines. This communication lays the stress upon the product considered in its context. The variable is the time and product/PLC will be graduated according 3 levels: 1. at a short time, 2. during a long period, 3. at end-of-life: conservation and valorization.

Key words: Industrial Engineering, Virtual Reality, Product Lifecycle Management, Heritage, Technical History. 2- Knowledge capitalization for industries 2.1- Why conserving?

Enterprises frequently use knowledge management in order to capitalize and re-use the know-how of their employees. Nowadays, the main difficulty is to capitalize it rapidly since: Heritage is the testimony of our life either in a social life or in old engineers retire, a professional life. Since the beginning, human always have young engineers have to be efficient in a short time, invented, created in order to improve their standard of living. young engineers make a quick turn around in All this knowledge has been created by our ancestors; it is our enterprises staying in the same company few years. duty to conserve it, to understand it and to use it for creating our future. 1- Introduction

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According to those conditions, how can it be possible to Indeed, there are many categories for classifying enterprise generate breaking innovation? As Stewart says (journalist for knowledge [LC1]: - at a job level: the magazine Fortune): “The most invaluable credit of the o explicit job knowledge, companies is its intellectual capital" [S1]. Consequently, new o implicit job knowledge, methods have to be found to answer this new problematic. - at an enterprise level: o local knowledge, 2.2- What kind of knowledge? o product knowledge, The company memory not only includes technical knowledge o enterprise knowledge. obtained by capitalizing its employee’s know-how. We can The figure 1 represents the progress time of an enterprise also consider the organizational memory due to the past and according to the Product Life-Cycle: from design to the present structure of the enterprise; and moreover project manufacturing and uses. At different levels, involved memory for capitalizing lessons and experiences from knowledge is represented. particular projects [P1].

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Figure 1: Cartography of all knowledge categories in enterprise.

Usually, knowledge capitalization only concerns the design and the manufacturing enterprises; centered around the product itself, the extracted knowledge gives jobs laws, best practices… Rarely other internal knowledge of the enterprise is added: cost… Moreover external knowledge from the enterprise is also nearly ever capitalized. Indeed, according to an historian point of view: it misses the context of the capitalization.

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2.3- The industrial context

The analysis of an industrial context according to an historian point of view allows determining three levels of details: first the machine, secondly the workshop, then the factory. It is what we call the Russian dolls concept (see figure 2).

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Machine

Figure 2: the Russian dolls concept.

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A machine is designed, built and used for a determined goal; it is settled in a shop floor and put in correlation with other shop floors in the factory. Studying this setting up and the links between machines and humans can lead to a global situation model. In correlation with the previous enumeration, it presents three corresponding contexts (see figure 3): 1. the technological context, 2. the organizational context, 3. the social context.

However, most of the time, it has been demonstrated that a product will probably have many life’s or many use situations.

3.1- An extended PLC: many “use life”

Many examples can be detailed for illustrating this theory: for example a “pen”. A pen is designed and manufactured by one first enterprise. Secondly, the pen is distributed by a supermarket and sold to the future user. But this user will lose his pen at work and one of his collaborators will find it and use it again. Again, again and again until the pen wills no longer work; consequently, it will be discarded out to the bin. Perhaps it would have luck and will be recycled but not sure. In this example, the evolution time considered is the product time or the human time as the action occurred during a definite time that can be measured at a human scale. Let’s give now an example with a time period evolution much longer: over 140 years.

It is the story of a steam engine that has been designed by Alphonse Duvergier1 in 1860. This steam engine is performing so well for industries that in 1890, nearly 600 machines have been built and sent all over the world. In 1898, four specimens of this steam engine are built by Piguet enterprise (Duvergier successors) and installed in MonteCarlo; coupled to a dynamo, they produce electricity for lighting the Prince Palace and Monaco Casino. But, in 1817, due to a bad management, the company decide to change the technology; one of the machine is sent in a sawmill near Moulins in France. In 1930, the machine is bought by another sawmill near Dijon in France. It is working in this factory for producing electricity until 1977; at this period, Figure 3: the industrial plant fitting. producing energy inside its own enterprise is more expensive than buying electricity to the French national company producer. Consequently, the steam engine is stopped and in 3- The evolution time problematic 1994, the steam engine is dismantled by the Ecomusée du If we analyze design methods used by enterprises (APTE, Creusot-Monceau in France in order to be stored in its AMDEC, QFD, 6 Sigma…), few of them take into account the reserve. time concept. However, time plays an important role at any Unused for 12 years, the machine is still stored; it has not scale of a process: been restored and it can not work any more. product time: it is the formalization of the Product Life-Cycle (PLC) that allows every actors of a development project to integrate all the other domains into its design part: how the idea was born in the R&D platform? How the object will be used by the client?... industrial environment time: it can be divided into two parts: the work time and the process time. However, both are currently fitted together. This time describes the interactions between the product and the machines or between the product and the humans who produce or use the artifact. But this time concept used in an industrial way relates only to a short period. If one first step of knowledge management is unrolled during a life part of a product and one other step few Figure 4: 1886: Steam engine from Piguet catalogue. years later, usually, there is no link between both capitalizations. 1 Alphonse Duvergier is born in 1818 and died in 1879.

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3.2- What about historian methods?

Figure 5: 1977: Steam engine in the sawmill.

In this example, the evolution time considered can not be a human time as nearly 3 generations have seen the steam engine in evolution. Consequently, it is necessary to extend the time axis; we call it the “earth time”. Moreover, according to those two examples, we can see that except for the first steps of its life, the object can reach many “Use life”. If the terminology “use life” is used from the object birth to its death, dynamic situations are: - research and design, - manufacturing, - sale, - use life 1, - … - use life n, - end-of-life (heritage / recycling / dismantling). During the object life, amount of knowledge is accumulated. It can be classified into two parts: - internal knowledge used: we speak here in term of technologies as defined by the Functional Diagram Bloc, - external knowledge used: here, only the function is taken into account as the object is used for its primary function. Let’s put in correlation the amount of knowledge generated and the extended PLC according to an “earth time”, it can be summed up by figure 6.

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But usually technological analysis cannot be sufficient; the environment of the machine also has to be capitalized: this is the organizational context. The studies concentrate on the flows created or used by the machine. Using industrial terms, we can speak about fluid flows, product flows… and interactions between the machine and the other machines of the manufactory or interactions between the machine and the employees: that's why we call it the organizational context. Nowadays, knowledge management concentrates on PLC and know-how. What about the enterprise organization, the project organization? Why do not we capitalize it? What about capitalization methods? Before focusing on the product, it is the management setting up that really allowed the success of a product. But some difficulties appear here: capitalizing something taking into account the evolution time axis is a new way of thinking for engineering sciences. However, according to what is said in the previous part of this communication, the proposed approach can enrich the understanding of enterprise workings and perhaps help to prepare future enterprise generations. Moreover, historians give an important place to human. Obviously, everything built and used by humans is made for improving their standards of living. Defining the evolution of the couple human/technologies (here technologies mean all the artifacts surrounding humans), the social context plays a role in the human evolution. Indeed, human evolution time is not constant: it jumps from step to step with no continuity. Historians call this concept the "dilated time". For example, if we consider the aerodynamic history, Gustave Eiffel is very famous for his Paris Tower, his bridges all over the world. But Gustave Eiffel is less known as the father of the

Figure 6: The extended PLC and associated knowledge.

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Historian approaches propose to take into account the global time concept of the product evolution in function of the human evolution: it is the "technological context". Global time is different from earth time as global time can be expanded or reduced; it is not a uniformed time and not at a constant scale as it takes into account the human evolution. Several historian methods have similarities with the PLC: for example the genetics. Introduced by Simondon, the genetics has been often used by Cotte during his historical studies [C1]. The genetics allows cartographing the characteristics of an object (nearly as the genome of humans). It shows the evolution of an object: for example the technology improvements in function of a time axis. But the time axis can be expanded; and it can be itself in function of everything else (energies for example). Indeed, we obtain a graphical explanation of the technologies growing up in function of energies used by humans (oil, gas…). When capitalizing and ordering picked up knowledge, historians enlighten the reasons of technological evolutions; they try to understand how it works, why the product has evolved in this way and not in an other way… Obviously the finalities of their studies can drive future innovations and be of major interest for design. We have to notice that Engineering Sciences also have similar works: in complement to functional view, structural view and comportment view, a product evolution view has been added [O1].

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aerodynamic. Indeed, at the beginning of the 20th century, in few years, Gustave Eiffel has demonstrated the fundamental low that allows a plane to fly: "The pressure above a wing is less important than the pressure under the same wing". In less than one hundred years, a new way of controlling our main dominating environment has been created: the air. Today, the main consequence of Eiffel discovery is the creation of an enormous new business: the air transport system.

4- End-of-life possibility: conservation of the industrial and technical heritage

The protection of scientific, technical and industrial heritage is a relatively recent idea. It is in England, in the Sixties, that was born what British people call the "industrial archaeology". The first experimentation object for the capitalization and the valorization of the heritage was the Ironbridge (this one was the first iron bridge, built in 1779 and classified to the world This example shows us the importance of analyzing the social heritage of UNESCO in 1986 [R1]). context of a machine, a manufactory, and a plant. In nearly all the cases, a little change at a microscopic level have an As all classical project approaches, before putting up a important impact to the evolution of the society and has project, the objectives and the main goal have to be fixed. influences to the human evolution. Many other examples can But speaking about heritage, we feel that knowledge have to be analyzed (like mobile phones: "never alone in the be capitalized (the goal) but we do not know why (the world!"…). It is the butterfly effect. objective). Thus, the knowledge domain is not determined 3.3- TIPS: linking technologies

As described in the Eiffel example, reaching innovations is due to an event succession: iron bridges Æ Eiffel tower Æ gravity studies Æ aerodynamic Æ aeronautic… Consequently, technology generation is rarely a chance but usually a cascade of causes and consequences. For example, in 1946, the Russian Genrich Altshuller developed the "Teorija Reshenija Izobretateliskih Zadatch"; usually called in English TIPS: "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving" or TRIZ in French: "Théorie de Résolution des Problèmes Innovants". Incapable to find a method for driving invention, he had analyzed more than 200 000 patents in order to see if logic could be found for resolving problems [A1]. He has developed many tools as the contradiction matrix, the DTC operators, the 9 screens… Finally, the one we would reminder is the evolution laws that propose a model for implementing future solutions according to the three main states of a product: static, kinematics and dynamic. Taking into account the evolution time concept for next generations of knowledge management tools will give us understanding for future organizational context and future social context (see figure 3). As Genrich Altshuller and its method for creating innovating technologies, it is our job to intend predicting next generations of technological uses (figure 7) and human needs and being.

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4.1- Why conserving industrial artifact from 19th and 20th century is a problem?

Until today, museums have been able to conserve heritage from many domains but mainly until the period of the industrial revolution. Why? Before the 19th century, it must be reminded that only natural energy was used such as water, wind, animals or humans; but nowadays, controlled energy is the basic with nuclear, gas, fuel, or even coal… The transition corresponds to the period when industries have widely mechanized the factories; moreover, it must be noticed it is the time when the world fairs appeared. In connection with industrial heritage, museographical capitalization tools have also to be customized to the knowledge and the considered machines. Consequently, methods and tools used by museums for capitalizing heritage coming up before the 19th century are out of target for capitalizing this new kind of knowledge of the 19th and 20th centuries. Why? Because artifacts are more and more complex inside themselves and they permanently interact with their environment. Jocelyn de Noblet illustrates it: "We are in 1910, a 70 years old engineer is visiting the Eiffel Tower in Paris with his young son. Taking into account the monument as an example, he explains him what is the material resistance, a mesh… Nowadays, the same engineer with his young son are visiting the Millau Bridge in France, but the engineer says to him: "I would explain it to you when you will be older as it is a little bit complicated" [N1]. As illustrated by these sentences, the context of technical evolution has changed and becomes more and more complicated, and it is changing continuously, in parallel with companies and technologies. Time becomes a fundamental and critical concept for capitalizing and re-using knowledge and product/processes/enterprise/technologies life cycles are

Technology T23

… from past ………………….. to future ...

Figure 7: from past to future.

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and consequently all that can be immortalized have to be capitalized. Thoulouze, director of the "Conservatoire des Arts-etMétiers" (Paris, France), said it: “An object is a witness of our society” [T1]. An object is defined by: - the artifact itself, - the know-how and its environment: that means the living memory.

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fully dependent when considering knowledge capitalization not only architecture. For instance, in a factory, there is the building but also actuators, motors and machines that and re-use. produce products: taking into account the technical point of view can reach to a better understanding of the past. But as we are speaking about mechanic and industries, a product 4.2- Digital Heritage Reference Model and also means there are mechanical kinematics and processes. methodology That's why merging engineering sciences and social sciences After having analyzed a product and the capitalized knowledge can be profitable for each one. associated during a short time, we have analyzed how a Our approach proposes a new kind of finality: as saving and product has evaluated during its extended PLC. We have maintaining physical object cost a lot for museums, and demonstrated that taking into account the context either at a sometimes dismantling is impossible as the machine falls in microscopic level or at a macroscopic level is essential for a ruin, we propose to preserve it as a numerical object. better understanding of the machine, of the process… Historian approaches are deeper than Knowledge Management Figure 8 presents the global process we use for capitalizing methods used in industries as they try to identify all the and for valorization of scientific and technical heritage. parameters that can explain why the machine was here, why it was running that way… Indeed, going directly from State A to State C is not Historian seems to have 2 main tasks: recommended. The various possibilities of State C - on one hand, to determine by which man and when enumerated before show it is necessary to capitalize every fact, law or scientifical theory have been everything we can and constitute an intermediary State B: the discovered or invented, Digital Heritage Reference Model [LB1]. One of the main - on the other hand, to describe and to explain the reasons is that when it is decided to conserve an object, amount of errors that have slowed down the usually, the finality of the conservation is not known: we progression of human and technologies. know that it is important to capitalize but we do not know for According to what Kuhn [K1] said about sciences and what which kind of finalities. have been said previously in this communication, we can conclude that there is a lack in the actually conservation methods: sciences and technologies have to be considered and

State C

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Process B-C Digital scale model + Historical File (technical file + contextual file) = Digital heritage Data Base

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One objective Not properly capitalized

Figure 8: methodology for preserving technical heritage.

The left hand column is the starting point of the global process. It gives the statement of the object and its environment at the beginning of the conservation study. This column characterizes the object with its physical properties and the considered "outside world" [LB2]. For this state A, knowledge capitalization methods and digitalization process have to be employed. Moreover, among the technologies used for

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scanning objects, 3D laser digitalization is the most popular. We are currently doing experimentations for a new solution called “Handyscan”. It uses self-positioning system and creates surface in real time. See figure 9.

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used. In the same way, in case of an object reconstruction (that's means to recreate physically the machine), it will be another part of the DHRM that will be taken into account. Consequently, it is necessary to have the more complete and detailed DHRM since at the beginning of the process we generally do not know what kind of finalities it will be used for. 5- Conclusion

As explained in this communication, merging two communities can be of benefit for each other: use the historian’s methods for knowledge management for enterprises, enrich historian's approaches with capitalization Figure 9: Laser digitalization. methods from engineering sciences. But obviously not only methods have to be considered: The right hand column of figure 8 gives the various finalities models used in industrial engineering can also be adapted for of the valorization and conservation project. Various finalities historian studies. Moreover, historian knowledge can enrich can be found for valorization of scientific and technical the semantic of engineering models in order to create heritage: innovative products. - virtual collections, - reconstruction, - industrial archaeology back-up, 6- References - public valorization for expert analysis, for historians, for young generations, [A1] Altshuller G., The Innovation Algorithm. TRIZ, systematic - or vulgarization for all kind of publics (museums). innovation and technical creativity, Technical Innovation For last case, several approaches can be developed. As Virtual Center, Inc., 312 p., 1999 Reality technologies are fully increasing and can now nearly [C1] Cotte M., Le fonds d'archives Seguin : aux origines de la take into account the five human senses, we are making révolution industrielle en France, Ecole des Hautes Etudes experimentations for applying Virtual Reality on old technical en Sciences Sociales, PhD Thesis, Paris object in order to make it usable in a virtual situation of use [K1] Kuhn T., La structure des revolutions scientifiques, 284 (figure 10).

Figure 10: Virtual reality simulation.

Finally, the middle column of figure 8, called "Digital Heritage Reference Model", is the necessary intermediate way for realizing final state. Whereas the direct way since the existing material data is not strongly advised as it will produce a non complete and realistic model of the object. Then, the Digital Heritage Reference Model (DHRM) is an essential intermediary step for a rigorous conservation method; it is built on a structured informational model. For example, in case of a museum presentation, if we intent to present virtually the object to public, only one part of the DHRM contents is

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p., 1970 [LB1] Laroche F., Bernard A., Cotte M., Deniaud S., A new methodology for a new life of old technical machines, CIRP Design Seminar, Alberta, Canada, 12 p., July 2006 [LB2] Laroche F., Bernard A., Cotte M., 2005, Méthode de construction de situations d'usages virtuelles de systèmes techniques anciens, CPI, conference proceedings, 19 p. [LC1] Laroche F., Coppens C., Le Coq M., La connaissance au service de l'innovation, Colloque CONFERE 2004, Nantes, France, 15 p., 8-9 july 2004 [N1] De Noblet J., Patrimoine et avant-garde scientifique et technique au XXIième siècle, OSTIC workshop, Institut de l'Homme et de la Technologie, march 2005 [O1] Ouazzani A., Bernard A., Bocquet J.-C., Process modelling: a design history capture perspective, 2nd International Conference Integrated Design and Manufacturing in Mechanical Engineering, Compiègne, France, 1998 [P1] Pomian J., Mémoire d’entreprise, techniques et outils de la gestion du savoir, Editions Sapienta, 1996 [R1] Rolland-Villemot B., Le traitement des collections industrielles et techniques, de la connaissance à la diffusion, OCIM letter n°73, pp.13-18, 2001 [S1] Stewart T., Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations, 1997 [T1] Thoulouze D., Recherche et développement dans l’entrprise: conserver l’instrumentation, pourquoi, comment?, studies journey proceedings, april 2006

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