Centre Technique Des Industries Mecaniques (CETIM)

Cetim was set up nearly 50 years ago on the joint initiative of the French government and the French Federation of Mechanical Engineering Industries (FIM) The aim of this creation was to pool resources and technical skills funded by a designated tax. Today Cetim is France's largest Industrial Technical Centre (CTI). With a staff of nearly 700 - for the most part engineers and PhD– spread over three main sites (Senlis, Nantes and Saint-Etienne), Cetim is now France's benchmark institute in the field of mechanical engineering. It holds the Carnot label awarded by the French Ministry of Research.
The Cetim organisation is supplemented by four regional technological resource centres, two international subsidiaries (in Morocco and Singapore), five associated centers and a science foundation, with a total work force numbering more than 1200, generating economic activity of 150 M€ a year, more than 50% of which comes from providing technological services to the industry. Cetim's effectiveness is attested by the French National Research Agency, which measured a 175% growth in R&D sales by the Institut Carnot Cetim between 2006 and 2013. Cetim has also historically been a key player in spreading high-speed machining technologies in France, as the practical organiser for complex regulations (machine safety, Reach, etc.). Cetim is also the driving force in France behind mechanical engineering standardisation, providing 60% of its funding and on-going technological support (with its experts occupying more than 210 seats on various national and international commissions). Cetim maintains a local presence in France in close contact with its 6,500 SME subscribers. It is embodied in thematic meetings (sixty-one "Mechanical Engineering Rendez-vous" every year with nearly 2,000 participants) and, above all, in the organisation of on-going collective regional projects with government/regional co-funding (eighty current projects benefiting more than 1,000 SMEs). Cetim's mission is to find the technologies of the future in universities by means of nine joint laboratories and to contribute to scientific development through more than 35 co-funded PhD; it can then construct the applications of tomorrow with its industrial partners.