Proposal and experimentation of an analysis grid to map knowledge of the factory of the future

Abstract An industrial change is necessary to respond to the environmental, societal and economic challenges. The aim of this paper is to offer and test a methodology that will identify and structure studies that are relevant to the industrial mutation. This scientific approach is based on the analysis of state-of-the-art definition of the factory of the future. A specific grid and three different data collection methods have been experimented in three universities of technology in France. The results of this study lead us to prepare a comparative analysis of the obtained results. They show the interests and limits of this approach and its clarity.