Co-Design Process for Upskilling the Workforce in the Factories of the Future

Abstract

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.

Hands-on Learning Modules for Upskilling in Industry 4.0 Technologies

“…The typology of these learning modules is mainly based on short and specialized actions that address the requirements previously identified during a co-design process that involved learners, companies, and educators, as suggested by the FIT4FoF project [5]. The methodology follows the blended learning paradigm, considering the e-learning training followed by presential learning activities led by instructors and focusing on practical experimentation that considers real problem-solving.…”

“…2 illustrates the general structure of the designed training plan, including the learning methodology and examples of learning modules. The diversity of learning modules includes online modules and hackathons related to IoT, MAS, and Mobile Robotics, which are emergent I4.0 technologies, and were selected following a co-design process described in [5], which involved learners, educators, and companies. The presence of hackathons provides a more challenging environment to consolidate the learnt skills.…”

“…For example, in the EU FIT4FoF (www.fit4fof.eu), a skill gap analysis was performed in six technological areas, including data analytics, cybersecurity, collaborative robotics, and human-machine integration, allowing to identify more than 100 new job profiles to face this new job market scenario associated with the factories of the future. During this research, the ICoED methodology [5] was established to design learning programs that consider a collaborative environment that integrates three stakeholders, namely companies, educators, and learners. This co-design interaction results in a learning program dedicated to overcoming the learners/companies' upskilling and requalification demands [5].…”

“…During this research, the ICoED methodology [5] was established to design learning programs that consider a collaborative environment that integrates three stakeholders, namely companies, educators, and learners. This co-design interaction results in a learning program dedicated to overcoming the learners/companies' upskilling and requalification demands [5]. These resulting learning activities, focusing on soft and hard skills, must be designed for the short-term activities, aligned with a pedagogical paradigm that maintains the learner's interest and concentration, enhancing the activity objective centered on solving the learner's real problems and taking in-situ.…”

“…Similarly, the education sector has also to follow this challenge, offering new training programs to qualify the workforce with the necessary soft and hard skills required for I4.0 and related to disruptive ICT. For this purpose, new learning paradigms should be considered and learning actions should be the result of a co-design process that involves different stakeholders, namely learners, companies, and educators [5], preparing workers and academics for the digital transformation [6]. Additionally, I4.0 increased the demand for skilled professionals that did not exist before; in fact, several new professions arose with this new industrial revolution, e.g., data scientist and cloud services manager, for which there is still a shortage of training offers around the world.…”