Transforming Educational Programmes For Future Industry 4.0 Capabilities

Project summary

This project addresses - skills mismatches (the discrepancy between workers' skills and labour market needs) emerging across EU due to many sectors undergoing rapid technological change. This current development of new technology in industry is often referred to as the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). Today, the term Industry 4.0 refers to a general emerging trend within the European industry (which will be the understanding of the term in this application), although the term originally was introduced as a response to the German situation. If the European industry is to remain competitive, there will be a demand for highly skilled labour at various levels in the transformation towards Industry 4.0 across Europe. However, many educational activities are taking place within isolated technical disciplines/domains, lacking the full cross-disciplinary approach and understanding embedded in Industry 4.0. Accordingly, there is a need to strengthen and develop new educational activities ensuring the needed competences across domains. This project aims at identifying and addressing the gaps in skills between industry needs and the future competences of engineers and technicians focused at the emerging domain of Industry 4.0. The project will address the identified needs and challenges through the development of an overall ‘Educational Framework’, which is the core output of the project. The Educational Framework should be regarded as a ‘toolbox’ for educators within the domain of Industry 4.0. The aim of the Educational Framework is to support the educational activities and decision making at each of the partnering institutions, addressing and minimising the gaps in skills and competences between industry needs and the educational capabilities. The Educational Framework is expected to help the educators at the partnering institution to overcome some of the barriers when educating technicians and engineers within the complex domain of Industry 4.0, e.g., the cross-disciplinary understanding and ability of the students. A Training Concept will be developed and made available online for other stakeholders outside the project to increase the number of people benefitting from the project. The development of the Educational Framework is expected to create a foundation and a guideline for educator in their continuous development for future educational activities within the domain of Industry 4.0. The partners in the project have been chosen based on their ability to contribute to the content and process of the project. Overall, the partners can be divided into two sub-groups based on how they predominately (not limited to) contribute to the project. The first group of partners (AAU, EUF-BIAT, TTU and UCN) all have a strong focus on development and research, evaluation, methods and tools. The second group of partners (FTO and TMMA) all have a strong focus on the practice of education and a more practice-based approach, e.g. state-of-the-art labs. The results of this project will directly influence the local and regional level, through ensuring a better match between educational skills and industry needs. However, given the large focus on the dissemination of the project results through national reference groups, the project is also expected to have an impact on a national and European level, being part of lowering the rate of unemployment amongst candidates. The match between the industry and the educational institutions will create a better understanding of the value of highly educated employees in a very dynamic area. This will increase the number of students employed in the industry. The effect on the reduction of the rate of unemployment will transfer more income for the society and less expenses.