About PMA

PMA (Production engineering, Machine design and Automation) is, as a division of the Mechanical Engineering Department, a part of the Engineering Faculty of the KU Leuven.

In line with the general mission of the university, the mission of PMA is threefold: education, research, and service to the industry and to the society at large.

As for education, the division is responsible for two options within the mechanical engineering study programme. One option concentrates on production techniques and production management, the other deals with machine design and mechatronics. The education in both options benefits from a strong interaction with research. This guarantees a high quality of education and an up-to-date curriculum.

PMA carries out research in the areas of production engineering, machine design and mechatronics. More specifically, the research themes include new production processes, CAD/CAM/CAPP, assembly automation, dimensional metrology and reverse engineering, machine and instrument design, structural dynamics and acoustics, motion control, programming and control of robots and intelligent machines, and life cycle engineering. We pursue a balance between basic or long-term research on the one hand, which is vital in order to maintain an advanced scientific level, and applied or short-term research on the other hand, which is probably the most important mission of an engineering research laboratory.

Over the years PMA has gained a lot of expertise in each of these areas, and has acquired or built advanced equipment and software. Know-how and infrastructure are exploited in the third component of our mission, service to the industry, in which tailored solutions are pursued or specific assistance is offered in the framework of bilateral projects, or consulting. We believe that we really have something to offer in this respect, and we invite you to contact us if you feel we could help to solve your problem. Our annual research report, which is available upon request, contains more details about our on-going research activities and expertise.