Innovation and functions in the spotlight at the CIC

“You cannot bring out new products unless you master innovation.” Beneath his debonair appearance, Jacques Jacot argued earnestly in favour of function analysis. A speaker at the 16th Congrès International de Chronométrie (CIC), held 25th and 26th September last in Montreux, Switzerland, his discourse was at the heart of this year’s theme: “Watch and movement functions: ergonomics, functionality and display”. Amidst a dozen presentations of complicated watches and innovative modules, Jacques Jacot, who is a full professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and president of the Association Suisse pour la Recherche Horlogère (ASRH), reminded the audience of the importance of taking the user’s needs into account when developing a new product. This is something to which Simon Henein – the incumbent of the Patek Philippe Chair at the EPFL’s Institute of Microtechnology in Neuchâtel – has given due consideration. Adapted to watchmaking, his flexure mechanisms could, in the future, considerably improve precision and at the same time open the doors to a whole new mechanical world.

Transform needs into functions

Taking the stage before a packed auditorium, Jacques Jacot had the 800-strong audience roaring with laughter when he declared, “I’m not here to sell something, I’m just here to chat!” Indeed, after a succession of presentations with more or less promotional overtones, Professor Jacot hoped simply to convince fellow speakers and listeners that when developing any new product, they must “take note of customers’ needs and satisfy them with corresponding functions.” While this may seem like stating the obvious, Jacques Jacot is convinced the Swiss watch industry needs to do more: “Do you honestly think the customer wants to use something as fiddly as a crown to wind the movement, or set the time and date on his watch?”

Integrated into numerous companies since the 1960s, function analysis puts the future user’s requirements at the heart of the design brief. One of the best, and possibly first, examples in industrial history concerns the 2CV. It’s a little-known fact that Citroën equipped its new small car with a revolutionary innovation for the 1940s. In addition to the chassis suspension, each wheel is fitted with a mass damper connected by a spring and soaked in oil. This simple device absorbs high frequencies and in doing so minimises vibrations inside the passenger compartment.

A delightful brief

The engineers at Citroën set out to achieve this result in line with specifications drawn up by Pierre-Jules Boulanger, appointed chairman of the firm in 1935. His brief paints a delightful picture of pre-war rural France: “Have your department study a car which will carry two farmers wearing clogs, fifty kilos of potatoes and a small cask of wine at a maximum speed of 60 kph with petrol consumption of three litres per 100 kilometres. This car must be able to drive on unmade roads and must be sufficiently light for a novice lady driver to handle without any difficulty. It must be comfortable and able to carry a basket of eggs across a ploughed field without breakage. The cost of this vehicle must be considerably less than that of our Traction Avant.”

“I imagine the eggs were the engineers’ biggest headache,” joked Jacques Jacot. Still, he had made his point, namely that Citroën’s research and development department had to set up a technology platform capable of inventing a new suspension system, and that the engineers delivered an innovative end product: the fabled 2CV, launched after the war in 1948 and still on the road today.

From car to watch

“Designing a car’s suspension follows the same lines as choosing an escapement for a watch,” he concluded. “You can pull something off the shelf, something you already know how to make, or you can innovate and propose something that’s never been seen before. Of course you also have to consider what the customer will appreciate.” What if the answer were absolute precision? Professor Simon Henein thinks he has it in his sights. “By applying our research to watchmaking, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to up the ante!” Appointed in November 2012 at the head of Instant-Lab, the new micromechanical and horological design laboratory based in Microcity, the EPFL microtechnology centre in Neuchâtel, he leads a team of ten researchers. One of Professor Henein’s fields of expertise is the development of flexure mechanisms which utilise the elastic properties of materials to produce mechanical joints. More specifically, these complex devices draw on a leaf spring’s property to flex along certain axes and stay rigid along others to reproduce the kinetic functions of pivots, slides, cardan joints, ball joints, etc.

“There is a twofold advantage to this type of mechanism,” explains Simon Henein. “Firstly, it completely eliminates friction and therefore wear. Secondly, it enables displacements with nanometric precision.” Developments made by this technology platform have already been given applications in robotics and telescopes, and can expect to find important applications in watchmaking too: “By adapting an inertia ring to our system, it becomes a fully feasible alternative to the conventional balance and spring,” says Professor Henein. “With no solid friction forces, we can aim for ten times less energy dissipation from the oscillator. However, this would mean completely rethinking the movement. It’s like having a car travel through a vacuum with no air resistance whatsoever. The engine would be enormous.”

While some say there is nothing left to invent in mechanical watchmaking, others retort that the gates are wide open, provided all-important efforts are made to develop the technology needed to produce innovative products… that are also useful to the people who buy them.