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Description
Context, Background & Challenges: The manufacturing sector is increasingly becoming global, with companies that design and manufacture components, parts and finished products for other companies, exploiting expertise etc. The EC report A New Skills Agenda for Europe states that 39% of companies currently have difficulties finding suitably skilled ICT professionals. At the same time, EC reports clearly reveal that SMEs accounting to about 70-85% of the workforce in different European Economic Area (EEA) countries. Thus, current and future workers employed across EEA countries, in either large countries or small island states such as IS and MT, or by micro-SMEs, SMEs and/or multinationals, need to have a set of skills and competences allowing them to adapt to working methods and opportunities arising from IND4.0 and GDM.
Project Objectives: To proactively reduce the skills mismatch, the aim of the MAGIC project is to develop a novel joint curriculum and course by which HEI trainers can attract, and help first cycle students (BSc) to learn in an integrated way about GM/GDM in the context of IND4.0. The project aims to target the National priority of social inclusion by offering innovative training opportunities for students that are part of vulnerable groups (i.e. more than 40% of the Eng. students within the Faculty of Engineering and Management of Technological Studies (EMTS) come from rural poor areas and low income families; there are also a number of Roma students enrolled within the EMTS faculty that the consortium will motivate to be involved in both development of the project as well as in exploiting the project results). The project will tackle the business development, innovation and SMEs, since it aims to create innovative training materials (including case studies) for SMEs and better preparing students for the GDM sector allowing them to gain entrepreneurial skills to cope with industrial demands.
Summary of project results
The manufacturing sector is increasingly becoming global, with companies that design and manufacture components, parts and finished products for other companies, exploiting expertise, raw materials, manufacturing capabilities, cost, and an efficient supply chain that spans across the globe. It is hence not a coincidence that industry is undergoing the 4th industrial revolution (IND4.0). This IND4.0 coupled with a shift towards global manufacturing (GM) or global digital manufacturing (GDM) is increasingly changing the way companies do business. It is consequently also influencing the ‘skills set’ they expect from their workforce to cope with this new challenge. In order to proactively take action towards reduce this skills mismatch, there is a need to urgently prepare employees to be ready for IND4.0 jobs and GDM working environments. Thus, the main aim of the MAGIC project was to develop a novel joint curriculum and course by which HEI trainers can attract and help first cycle students (BSc) to learn in an integrated way about IND4.0, entrepreneurship and GDM. The consortium developed the following outputs: a Student’s beginner guide for GDM – an infographic based material used to attract students to the project areas, a curricula for Industry4.0 for Manufacturing, content and case-studies related to Industry 4.0 and GDM that is both freely available via an OER platform (www.camis.pub.ro/magiclms) and in book format with ISBN (available in English, Icelandic and Romanian). Furthermore, the consortium did some joint research in the area of additive manufacturing that resulted into two joint scientific research publications, one of which published in a high-end journal. This will ensure the high-visibility of the partnership and of the MAGIC project.
The consortium also organised two joint staff training events related to Industry 4.0, manufacturing and additive manufacturing, where 18 staff members improved their knowledge and experience, not only in the project areas, but also at personal level.
Summary of bilateral results
Given the scope of the project, the partnership includes the Center for Teaching from the University of Akureyri (UNAK) in Iceland that is very interested in supporting the development and take up of the interdisciplinary curriculum on Global Digital Manufacturing for Industry4.0. Furthermore, the project benefited from the involvement of the donor partner by extensive knowledge in curriculum design especially where online activities are foreseen as UNAK has such experience in their day to day activities (as the academic studies in Iceland mostly rely on online activities due to geographical distribution of the Icelandic population).UNAK thus contributed extensively to the curriculum design, developing and testing of the MAGIC courseware. Several joint results were obtained during the project implementation (actually all results in the project were shared results): the MAGIC curriculum, the courseware content, the student guide for Industry4.0, an ISBN book and two scientific publications published in renowned Journals. All results include the experience and complementary expertise of all partners of the consortium, an aspect that lead to better results from all points of view: academic, scientific, aesthetically pleasing, understanding, etc.