An intelligent learning framework for Industry 4.0 through automated planning

Abstract

The fourth industrial revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, has already begun enabling technological innovations in various domains, especially in the manufacturing and service industry. The conditions of the disruptive new product-service emergence and quickly changing work environments require cultivating a competitive workforce that is equipped with essential knowledge and skills in Industry 4.0. The work presented herein identifies key competencies required for engineers in Industry 4.0 from the extant literature and offers a mechanism to facilitate knowledge and skills acquisition. Specifically, an automated planning software tool, iCoursePlanner, is proposed to recommend an optimized pathway to attain the identified competencies through not only offline courses in a college but also Massive Open Online Courses. This tool is based on a mobile app system in a cloud environment integrated with an optimization model for automated planning. iCoursePlanner uses the initial knowledge and goal knowledge of a learner to suggest a customized course plan. Case studies are conducted for industrial and manufacturing engineering students at Iowa State University and Bradley University to demonstrate how it can be used to help a student to acquire key competencies for Industry 4.0. The originality of the proposed automated course planning tool is rooted in the personalized course plan for each student that considers individual educational background and goal knowledge.

Prerequisite knowledge‐based automated course planning with semantics consideration

“…To demonstrate the optimality of the proposed mathematical model, three planners, ICPwithHSR, ICPwithoutHSR, BFSwithHSR, and a problem generator, ExpProbGen, have been developed. As the program names imply, ICPwithHSR is the software program for intelligent course planning (ICP) that implements the proposed mathematical model with the HSR inference engine; ICPwithoutHSR is the software program for the existing model [38], which does not support the HSR inference; BFSwithHSR is the brute‐force search software program that searches the entire solution space with the HSR inference engine and guarantees the optimal solution; and, lastly, ExpProbGen is a software program that randomly generates problem sets for the experiments. ExpProbGen can generate a variety of problem data sets by configuring the number of different courses, the number of different knowledges, the number of preKnowledges and postKnowledges per a course, the number of initial and goal knowledges.…”

“…The experimental results verify the optimality of the course plans generated by the proposed mathematical model. Furthermore, the optimality test results show that the proposed mathematical model discovers hidden solutions that the existing model does not discover, in 10% of experiments, and in 40% of experiments, better solutions were obtained than those of the existing model [38]. Such outperformance is attributed to the HSR inference embedded in the proposed mathematical model.…”

Roles and challenges of innovation, industry 4.0, and sustainability competencies development in engineering students

“…Otras competencias encontradas en la literatura relacionadas con industria 4.0 son [84]: trabajo colaborativo, innovación, adaptabilidad, resolución de problemas, organización personal, visión estratégica del conocimiento, proactividad, creatividad, trabajo en equipo, iniciativa, comunicación, preparación a la globalización, entre otras [74], [85]- [87].…”

Effects of Science, Mathematics, and Informatics Convergence Education on Creative Problem-solving

“…Computing technologies, such as artificial intelligence and IoT, have led the fourth industrial revolution. Unlike the previous industrial revolution, the fourth industrial revolution had a fast pace of change and a wide range [1]. This is because SoftWare(SW) has been integrated into the existing domain (such as a SW+X), innovatively solving problems that have remained unsolved.…”