Plastics Industry gives direct employment to over 1.45 million people in Europe, with more than 60.000 companies operating, the most of them SMEs and turnover of 320 billion euro in 2013. Plastics industry is defined by an Integrated Supply Chain where concentrated professional expertise and cost efficiency are its core benefits, but developing collaboration and managing the high amount of information are obstacles. Plastic European companies, particularly SMEs, must evolve and modernize their production processes. ICT is an important factor for maintaining competitiveness, as it not only facilitates efficient design and development of new products; it also brings intelligence to the shop floor. The ICT contribution to the Factories of the Future aims at improving the efficiency, adaptability and sustainability of manufacturing systems as well as their better integration within business processes in an increasingly globalised industrial context.There are ICT Solutions which can be used for improving the Integrated Supply Chain Management. However, the use of these Advanced ICT Tools is not implemented within the European Plastic Industry because the advanced management concepts behind are confronted with the lack of:• Skills of Technical Staff of Plastics SME regarding Advanced Manufacturing Management and Integrated Supply Chain Management.• Digital skills of Technical Staff of Plastics SME needed for ICT exploitation. • Knowledge and/or practical experience about what Advanced ICT Tools can be used and how. • Collaborative and communication skills, allowing a better performance of the Integrated Supply ChainTo overcome the mentioned barriers, ICTPlast is launched with the main objective of increasing the competences of technicians of Plastic SMEs related with Manufacturing Process Planning and exploitation of Advanced ICT Tools.The project will have the next specific objectives:• Develop the skills of Technicians of Plastic SMEs related to Production, Sourcing Planning and Delivery Planning.• Increase Digital skills of Technicians of Plastic SMEs. • Develop practical-work based activities addressed to introduce Advanced ICT Tools within Plastic SMEs.• Develop collaborative and communication skills of Technicians of Plastic SMEs along the Supply Chain.Next partners from 5 countries will participate:• 4 Associations whose activities are directly addressed to professionals of Plastic SME, including Vocational Education Training services• 2 Universities specialized in Manufacturing Management and its corresponding Advanced ICT Tool and Training which will deliver their knowledge and practical experienceThe next results will be obtained;• Co-Created Methodological Guide will be developed, with the direct participation of End Users, with the main objective of determining the key contents, methods and tools needed for improving the critical competences of Technicians of Plastic SMEs in the concepts underpinned for enhancing Manufacturing Process Planning competences and the use of Advanced ICT Tools. The Co-Created Methodological Guide will also inlclude the training program as an outline of the training process.• Training Materials addressed to Technicians of Plastic SMEs, more specifically to the SMEs planners, about the main issues related to plan manufacturing activities and the Advanced ICT Tools that support the planning.• Designed Practical Training Sessions addressed to Technicians of Plastic SMEs about the use of Advanced ICT Tools.• Setting-up and configuration of an e-Training Platform, integrating different components such as: learning management system, collaborative tools, social network tools, and virtual machines with the advanced ICT Tools for Manufacturing Planning, the training materials…• Creation of 4 ICTPlast UNITS within all the Associations in order to ensure the sustainable exploitation of the project after the project lifetime.• Development of Dissemination Actions addressed to the European Plastic collective.VALIDATION ACTIONS will be organized on each country, based on the practical implementation of Training Materials, Designed Practical Activities and e-Training Platform, involving about The Validation Actions will involve 30 Technicians from Plastic SMEs (10 in France). Evaluation and analysis will be doneProject Activities will be completed with Management and Implementation actions IMPACT during the project lifetime:ICTPlast will benefit a number of persons during the project lifetime:• 130 Technicians of Plastic SMEs (30 in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and 10 in France) will be trained, through their participation in the validation actions of Training Materials, Practical Training Activities and e-Training Platform. • 1300 Technicians of Plastic SMEs (300 in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and 100 in France), will be aware, through the dissemination actions to be carried on through the project website, newsletters, leaflets, etc…
The motivation of the project is the confirmation that ICT is an important factor to maintain competitiveness, since not only do they facilitate the design and development of new efficient products, but they also provide intelligence to the production plant. The contribution of ICT Its objective is to improve the efficiency, adaptability and sustainability of manufacturing systems, as well as its better integration in business processes in an increasingly globalized industrial context. SME technicians in the plastic sector involved in manufacturing management have a lot of experience, acquired over the years, and they know how to deal with the problems they usually face. However, they are not sufficiently familiar with the application of advanced ICT tools to their work, within the new paradigm of manufacturing model, which results in a reduction of the competitiveness of their companies. Technicians must be trained in Digital skills. and high-level ICT in order to apply them to new manufacturing models and to increase the overall efficiency of the industry, as well as its own performance. Fundamental objectives: • Improve the digital and ICT skills of SME Technicians in the plastic sector. • Promote learning based on work, with a training methodology based on "learning-doing" focused on the application of concepts and tools to real cases of each company. The participating entities were: 4 associations of the plastics industry, Valencian Association of Plastics Businessmen AVEP (Spain), Consorzio per la Promozione della Cultura Plastica PROPLAST (Italy), Associação Pool-Net - Portuguese Tooling & Plastic Network Pool-Net (Portugal), Gospodarsko Interesno Zdruzenje Grozd Plasttehnika PCS (Slovenia) and 2 universities, Universitat Politècnica de València - Center for Research in Management and Production Engineering CIGIP-UPV (Spain), Université de Bordeaux UB (France). The training elements have been classified in 6 Modules: • M1: Demand forecast. Predicting the future demand of the company's products. • M2: Aggregate Production Planning. Decide the levels of production capacity in a long-term planning horizon. • M3: Master Production Planning. Decide the amount of products to be produced in each period with a mid-term planning horizon. • M4: Sequencing of Production Operations. Decide the order in which different products will be manufactured and assembled in a short-term planning horizon. • M5: Procurement Planning. Determination of the acquisition of raw materials in a medium and short term horizon. • M6: Distribution Planning. Establishing the delivery of goods and services to meet customer demand, including order management and transportation management. A total of 60 multimedia training elements were developed (videos with animation / narration) in English, of which 20 were translated into the different languages of the consortium associations (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Slovenian). The translated training elements have been the corresponding to the introduction, basic concepts and tools in each Module. Five ICT tools were selected for practical training: E-forcst (M1), WinQSB (M2), LEKIN (M4), Frepple (M3 and 5) and ODL Studio (M6). For each tool and Module a guide has been developed. practice of use, with data from a case study. An e-Training platform was created using Moodle, one of the most widely used Learning Content Management (LCMS) in the world. In the e-Training platform, 1 course was created for each of the project languages (including English) ), composed of the 6 Modules, which contain the multimedia training elements, the guides to use the tools, questionnaires, forums and wikis. The Validation Pilot Actions were programmed in batches of 2 weeks for each Module. In the first week the session 1 was developed, consisting of 4 hours of self-learning by the students, using the multimedia training elements and 1 hour of webinar with the teacher; and the session 2 in which the students attended a practical 3h classroom day in which the teacher trained them in the use of the tool. In the second week, the self-learning of the use of the tools for the resolution of a problem was developed. with data from the companies themselves during 4h; and session 3 was a 3h face-to-face practical day in which the teacher solved the doubts that had arisen in the resolution of the real case and closed the Module with the lessons learned. The students who validated the pilot actions were: • Spain: 52 • Italy: 62 • Portugal: 54 • Slovenia: 59 • France: 14