Apr 26 2011
On 29-31 March 2011, JEC 2nd I.C.S. (International Composites Summit) was held in Paris, France and set records for delegate attendance.
The 12 conferences and forums drew the largest number of delegates in its history with 2,000 attendees coming from throughout Europe and from as far away as Russian Federation, China, Japan, Korea and the USA. "We were pleased to see our attendance grow by some 25% with 91% satisfaction rate" commented Frédérique Mutel, JEC Group President and CEO.
"This year, the focus was on Automotive and Global Carbon Fiber Market. With the new regulations regarding CO2 emissions, OEMs and their supply chain are looking for new technologies to bring massive weight reductions. Bridging the gap between an exclusive, expensive high end carbon material suitable for producing up to now 1 aircraft per week and finding a reliable, competitive environmentally friendly material able to deliver 400 to 800 cars per week is the challenge the Automotive Industry has to face", adds Frédérique Mutel.
JEC Group also gathered all the OEMs and its supply chain to a private Automotive dinner at the Automobile Club de France, Place de la Concorde, the day before I.C.S. started. Frédérique Mutel goes on: "The Automotive Industry needs to understand where we really are on composites materials for mass production and find ways to move to new lightweight structural solutions and processes. Our aim is to give them an exhaustive overview of the most successful applications and help them set up the right supply chain partnership for introducing composites in a major, durable way into "normal" cars".
With more and more production demands, the composites industry is changing from low volume to high volume mass production. The second edition outlined how composites for mass production are ready for take-off into all industry markets. I.C.S. was well received by attendees with the following subjects: "Introducing next generation integrated composites aerostructures" for Aeronautics, "Widening the use of structural composites" for Construction & Civil Engineering and "Producing high quality in a high quantity" for Wind Energy.
During the I.C.S., JEC Group also introduced brand new and very successful cross-industry conferences and forums: Nano Materials ("Enhancing the mechanical and physical properties of composites") and Non Destructive Testing in partnership with CETIM.
Finally during I.C.S. second edition, JEC Group launched for the first time in Paris an Economic conference, where well-known experts provided a global overview of the composite market worldwide.
With a speaking faculty that included industry leaders, I.C.S. brought together about 100 papers from 15 nationalities with very prestigious confirmed names, such as BMW Group, Dassault Aviation, Eurocopter Deutschland GmbH, Ford, Gamesa Innovation & Technology, Hyundai Motor, EADS Innovation Works, Latecoere, Mc Laren, NASA-Marshall Space Flight Center, Repower, Rolls-Royce Deutschland Ltd & Co KG, Safran Engineering Services, Siemens AG…. And also famous universities and Research & Development Centers: Ecole des Mines de Douai, Institute for Machine Tools and Industrial Management (iwb), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussées, Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Stanford University, Technical University of Munich, Technische Universität Dresden, Institut für Leichtbau und Kunststofftechnik, The City College of New York, Université Lyon, University of Manchester and University of Nottingham….
The dates were also announced for the 3rd edition of I.C.S. on JEC Asia 2011, which will be held on 18-20 October in Singapore, at Suntec.