Making our Workforce Fit for the Factory of the Future

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Publications

Co-design process for upskilling the workforce in the factories of the future

Publication . Geraldes, Carla A.S.; Fernandes, Florbela P.; Sakurada, Lucas; Rasmussen, Ann Lilith; Bennyson, Rene; Pellegri, Umberto; Leitão, Paulo

The digital transformation that the world is facing has a strong impact in the professional occupations and job profiles in the factories of the future context, requiring the need of upskilling and re-qualification of the workforce. Taking this into account, an Industrial Collaborative Educational Design (ICoED) is presented comprising three stages and eight steps, and considering a democratic and collaborative participation of the different stakeholders, namely the managers, educators and learners, each one providing its own perspective on the design of the training programme. In this co-design process, the analysis of the skills’ gap is a crucial task to prepare the initial stage of the process, particularly identifying the needs in terms of soft and hard skills. The proposed ICoED process was applied to solve an upskilling problem of an industrial metal stamping company, with the participants performing three workshops to execute the eight steps, reaching a training programme with five modules, each one settled with proper activities, resources and infrastructures.

2021Conference object

Open access

Analysis of the workforce Skills for the factories of the future

Publication . Leitão, Paulo; Geraldes, Carla A.S.; Fernandes, Florbela P.; Badikyan, Hasmik

Industry 4.0 is promoting the digitisation of manufacturing sector towards smart and more efficient factories, seen worldwide as the fourth industrial revolution. However, its complete adoption strongly depends on the skills that existing workforce and future professionals can have in the different dimensions of this multidisciplinary vision, contributing to increase the digital maturity level of companies from the industrial sector. Additionally, new job profiles are emerging to face the implementation of these innovative approaches, which implies the need for the re-qualification and up-skilling of existing workforce, particularly focusing the digital skills. In this context, this paper analyses the gap and impact in the non-technical and technical skills required for the successful transition into digitisation, particularly across six manufacturing areas covering the collaborative robotics (cobots), additive manufacturing, mechatronics and machine automation, data analytics, cybersecurity and humanmachine interface.

2020Conference object

Open access

Co-design of technical upskilling training program through early stakeholder involvement

Publication . Pors, Ann Lilith Kongsbak; Bennyson, Rene; Laursen, Esben Skov; Geraldes, Carla A.S.; Leitão, Paulo; Sheridan, Irene; Christiansen, Lasse

The present and future digital transformations of industry 4.0 set a high skill requirement for workers. This skill requirement calls for upskilling, a change in job profiles, and lifelong learning, both for the worker, the workplace, and society in general. However, for upskilling activities to leave a lasting impact on the behaviour and skills of the worker, the upskilling needs to be authentic, relevant, and valuable. Unfortunately, many traditional upskilling activities, such as coursework and lecturing, do not meet these demands. This paper investigates how the early involvement of stakeholders in the process of Industrial Collaborative Educational Design (ICoED) can contribute to authentic, relevant upskilling of industrial workers. The article takes a point of departure in industrial, educational research and investigates how educational authenticity benefits from the co-design process. Twenty-one upskilling workshops across seven pilot projects in a number European countries are evaluated focusing on how the stakeholder involved co-design process enables authenticity, relevancy and value. The results indicate that both realism and applicability were obtained. Furthermore, it is discussed how this type of engaging activity can ensure worker ownership and transparency of the upskilling activities by raising the worker’s voice and how these principles can be applied in other and further upskilling activities.

2022Conference object

Open access