The need to create a truly European workforce and compete successfully in a global scale require innovative company level VET capabilities and strategies. Many efforts to improve efficiency in manufacturing businesses are dependent on blue collar competences. New efficient machinery and lean ways of working are implemented in vain, if the employees have not internalized the knowledge and gained the competences to maintain and take further the efficiency gains. Thus, there is an increasing need for manufacturing companies in Europe, especially in medium enterprises, to put in place and further develop systematic approaches for competence management. On the other hand, there are a variety of tools both at the European and national levels that are designed to help for the recognition and transparency of skills and qualification. However, most medium scale companies lack the necessary capabilities to implement those tools in a coherent and strategic approach towards managing the competences of their workforce. Europe's ET 2020 strategy also underlines the global challenges and the "Joint Report from the European Commission and Member States" adopted in November 2015 Edcation Council states that "(through) A more active use of innovative pedagogies and tools for developing digital competences, Education and training — at all levels — can benefit from the introduction of well-tested innovative pedagogical practices and didactic materials that have demonstrated their capacity to contribute in a concrete manner to inclusive, engaged learning for diverse learners." It also states under the title of "Facilitating learning mobility at all levels", that "The first Mobility Scoreboard (2014), produced in follow-up to the 2011 Council Recommendation on learning mobility, reveals that the environment for learning mobility varies greatly between Member States, with significant barriers remaining in terms of information, student support and recognition. Actions on transparency, quality assurance and the validation and recognition of skills and qualifications have to be tracked and pursued."In this context, the overall purpose this project is to develop, pilot and implement a competence management system for metal (COMET) sector enterprises and schools in the framework of a school enterprise cooperation model and in partnership with European experience to help implement European and national competence management tools and systems. The objectives are:1. To help metal enterprises better manage their workforce through learning outcome based competence management and as a result, obtain better results in connection with their business strategies.2. To design and implement on a pilot basis a school-enterprise cooperation system for the metal sector companies using a competence management (COMET) approach3. To improve enterprise and school capacity to analyze, understand, express, address and manage human resource challenges including, but not limited to, the ability to better manage and anticipate skill needs over a strategic horizon4. To facilitate the upgrading of the skills and qualification of blue and white collar employees in the metal sector in partnership with schools5. To help schools participating in the cooperation model better adapt themselves to evolving labor market needs by working closer to metal enterprises.Target Groups of the project will be metal companies and their managers, VET school managers and teaching staff, company training staff, workers in the metal sector and most importantly, students in VET schools as prospective metal sector employees.As the sub sectors under metal branch require relatively well defined hard and soft skills that are not culture dependent and can be easily carried and used by the individuals across borders, a European transnational approach is more likely to succeed in metal sector. The need for transnational implementation of the project arises from the need to enable an exchange of knowledge and experience between differing country experiences. German enterprises are at the forefront of skills management capabilities while Spanish enterprises and social partners have developed initiatives over the last years in the field. Some well established Turkish enterprises, too, have well functioning talent management systems that could inspire a competence management model for metal industries. There is a great deal of added value in bringing these three countries for developing and piloting a system for the metal sector that is more or less of cross boundary quality in terms of skills requirements. A transnational work will allow a proper benchmarking, as well as designing elements that will help identify common as well as different aspects arising from the particular needs of the respective labor markets and levels of economic development.
Qualified workforce is one of the key elements currently for the industry to ensure sustainable competition both in global and local scale. The emphasize and importance placed by the providers of vocational training and education, the policy makers and private sector enterprises on the vocational education and training and cooperations established in this regard are decisive to a greater extent for ensuring qualified workforce. SMART COMET Project, accomplished accordingly and supported by Turkish National Agency within the scope of European Union Erasmus + Program, aims to reinforce the cooperation between the vocational high schools and enterprises through the life-long learning perspective and therefore contributes to the sustainable development of qualified workforce. Providing the vocational training and education system with the capability to respond to the requirements of sector-specific employment market on a high-level and contributing to enterprises on an ever-increasing competition environment within the sector is among the main objectives of the project. In addition to this, enterprises provide support and assistance to vocational education and training through various activities and opportunity to reinforce and consolidate the theoretical knowledge with practical practices and applications is offered to the students. The main objective of the project is to reinforce and consolidate the reciprocative benefits, namely win-win practice between the schools and enterprises. The Project is realized by means of a partnership established between the providers of vocational training and education of Turkey, Germany and Spain and the national and international enterprises towards enhancing the international cooperations. The Project is realized under the partnership of Ministry of National Education Directorate General for Vocational and Technical Education (Turkey), MESS Training Foundation (Turkey), DEKRA Akademie (Germany), FLM Fundacion Laboral del Metal (Spain) and the strategic partnership with the Turkish Employers Association of Metal Industries. SMART COMET is consisting of two main components; first one is the competence management model and the competence development platform (IT Tool: http://www.cometittool.com) as the output of this component and the second one is to develop the school-enterprise cooperation and proposal of the school-enterprise cooperation model. Within the process of establishment of the project outputs of these two components, five study visits were performed covering three countries for the purpose of making observations and exchanging views and opinions. The report was further revised and finalized by the evaluations of the Ministry of National Education, observations of the project partners, current European Union regulations and practices, endeavors of technical specialists and substantial contributions of the human resources specialists. As a result of this, an innovative competence management model supporting the sustainable vocational development and addressing to the entire sector and the industries of 3 participant countries is established and a competence development platform (IT Tool: http://www.cometittool.com) is accomplished to support this model. The overall results reached through this project are: • A pilot basis for school and enterprise cooperation system for the metal sector companies using a competence management (COMET) approach is developed and piloted, • A model is created for metal enterprises to better manage their workforce through learning outcome-based competence management, • Enterprise and school capacity to analyze, understand, express, address and manage human resource challenges including, but not limited to the ability to better manage and anticipate skill needs over a strategic horizon is improved though the model, • Upgrading skills and qualification of all employees in metal sector in partnership with schools is facilitated, • Schools’ participation in the cooperation model to better adapt themselves to evolving labor market needs by working closer to metal enterprises is piloted. The involvement and evaluations of Turkish Ministry of National Education in project was advantageous for the success of dissemination and exploitation of project results. This created an impact for the VET teachers and school administrators in the way of generating close ties with the private sector. The second output of the project, competence management IT tool has started to be operating in order for the sector to evaluate the development of the employees.