LEAN FOR WORK AND LEAN FOR LIFE- Train the trainer to teach Lean skills in VET This a 2 year long cross-sectoral development project aiming at developing the skills among VET teachers to train their colleagues and students in LEAN skills in innovative ways.” Train the trainer”. The training approach aims at being interactive, experiential and inductive. Lean skills have been claimed to be a “meta-skill”, because it is a way of thinking. Lean skills are applicable to all kinds of organizations, profit or non-profit, industry or service, private or public, big or small as well as to any type of function within an organization. Lean is an organizational and work method that aims to develop "lean" processes, ie free from waste in forms of cost, time and defects and oriented towards creating value for the customer. The Lean process is never ready as it is based on continuous improvement and is always focusing on the customer. Although Lean is derived from the Japanese car industry thousands of businesses worldwide in all industries and services, including healthcare and governments, are using Lean principles as the way they think and do. Today many education providers also start applying Lean in different ways in their organisations. There are many commercial businesses world wide providing training in Lean management and implementation but they are aimed at professionals and are very costly. They are not aimed at the target group of this project . This strategic partnerhip will seek to develop innovative approaches to professional development of VET teachers/trainers Lean skills in order to train students for working life. The aim is that all students should have Lean skills when they graduate. The partners in the project are 4 VET educators and one research and development institute from Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal and two in Spain. The Finnish partner is coordinator. All partners have Lean experience and Lean is also included in their strategic goals. The partners Lean work has been carried out together with organizations in the industry. Some of the working life partners will function as associated partners in this project. The objectives: - To build capacity and confidence of teachers/trainers in teaching Lean skills in an innovative way - Developing Key competences of life long learning for the participating teachers as part of capacity building; language and cultural skills, entrepreneurship (especially internal), digital skills, interaction and cooperation skills and problem solving skills, project skills, networking skills etc. - To increase capacity of each organizations Lean development and international work. This will be done by developing a high quality training package(scope:18 h) including 4 intellectual outputs that will be piloted with VET teachers in a LTT event: 1. A Basic Lean theory training package - What is Lean? Why Lean? 2. A High quality toolbox with Lean group exercises 3. A Digital environment with individual Lean exercises 4. A Teacher/trainer instruction manual on how to deliver the course. The training package will be produced, piloted and evaluated during 2 years time including 5 Transnational meetings and one LTT event in the Netherlands. Each partner country is in charge of one intellectual output. There will be 11 persons in the project group including the project coordinator. Thirty persons will attend the LTT event. All the material will be produced in English but translated into Finnish, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish which are the national languages of the partner countries. Project information and all output will be available on a free open access website. The material can be used on line or downloaded. In addition to Lean capacity the working methods will develop the participants Key competences for life long learning and digital skills. The main results: - There will be 5-8 teachers in each partner school that can train peers in how to train students in Lean skills in an engaging and innovative way. - There is ready to use web based material for training teachers and students in Lean skills. The material can be used by any VET school and the material is available in English, Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, Portuguese and Spanish. - The dissemination of the project has resulted in that also other VET institutions want to deliver Lean Skills to the students. The expected impact is that all teachers in the participating schools have the skills to teach Lean skills to their peers, students and to develop Lean thinking in their own organisation according to their schools strategy. In addition that these skills have spread in all the partner countries also to other VET providers. The long term impact is that VET graduates posses appreciated Lean skills and are attractive and employable in the labour market. In addition the Industry in Europe has a high quality and productive workforce in order to be competitive on the global market.
LEAN FOR WORK AND LEAN FOR LIFE- Train the trainer to teach Lean skills in VET This was a 2 year long cross-sectoral development project aiming at developing the skills among VET teachers to train their colleagues and students in LEAN skills in innovative ways.” Train the trainer”. The training approach was aiming at being interactive, experiential and inductive. Lean skills have been claimed to be a “meta-skill”, because it is a way of thinking. Lean skills are applicable to all kinds of organizations, profit or non-profit, industry or service, private or public, big or small as well as to any type of function within an organization. Lean is an organizational and work method that aims to develop "lean" processes, ie free from waste in forms of cost, time and defects and oriented towards creating value for the customer. Today many education providers also start applying Lean in different ways in their organisations. There exist much Lean material but it is aimed at professionals and not at this target group and they are very costly. This strategic partnership have been developing innovative approaches to professional development of VET teachers/trainers Lean skills in order to train students for working life. The long-term aim is that all students should have Lean skills when they graduate. The partners in the project were 4 VET educators and one research and development institute from Finland, the Netherlands, Portugal and two in Spain. The Finnish partner was the coordinator. All partners had previous Lean experience and Lean is also included in their strategic goals. The partners Lean work has been carried out together with associated partners from working life that have offered interesting visits, presentations and allowing us to make authentic picture material. The actual project group consisted of 12 persons including the project coordinator from Vamia. Several of the group members had not been part of international projects before. The objectives were to: - To build capacity and confidence of teachers/trainers in teaching Lean skills in an innovative way - Develop Key competences of life long learning for the participating teachers as part of capacity building - To increase capacity of each organizations Lean development and international work. This was be done by developing a high quality training package(scope:18 h) including 4 intellectual outputs that were piloted with VET teachers in each partner organisation as the LTT event was cancelled due to Covid-19. All together 24 teachers took part in a pilot. Content of the course: 1. A Basic Lean theory training package - What is Lean? Why Lean? (7 chapters based on Lean principles were produced) 2. A High quality toolbox with Lean group exercises ( 7 group excercises and 1 individual excercise with both written and video instructions ere produced) 3. A Digital environment with individual Lean exercises (3 digital environments representing service-, technical- and office environment each one including 8 elements) 4. A Teacher/trainer instruction manual on how to deliver the course. Each partner country was in charge of running one work package. All partners have contributed to all work packages. All the material is found on the project web page in Finnish, Swedish, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese. The material can be used on line or downloaded. http://www.leanforworkandleanforlife.eu/ During the project 4 transnational meetings were carried out face-to -face. One in each partner country. The LTT -piloting event and the final meeting was run on-line due to Covid. The Covid did not affect the results of the project. The project ended with an European webinar presenting the outcomes. The project was part of the European Vet Skills Week. The interest was large both among VET schools and companies. Each participating organisation is now having 6 teachers and the project workers that can use the training material and train others. There now exist a ready to deliver course in Lean for VET staff and students with supporting exercises, games and 360 virtual environments. During the piloting on-line it was discovered that the course and several of the exercises also can be delivered on-line. The content of the project has been and will also be used in other Erasmus funded projects. A new Erasmus project has been funded that will combine Sustainability, Circular economy and Lean - Train2Sustain. The idea is that the new project is a continuation to the Lean for work and Lean for life project. The long term impact of this project is that VET graduates possess appreciated Lean skills, are attractive on the labour market and the Industry in Europe has a high quality and productive workforce in order to be competitive on the global market. We also hope that interest to implement Lean and deliver Lean skills in VET spread through these project results and dissemination and that the material will be used by others