Industrial needs v. Engineering education curricula related to maintenance, production and quality in industry 4.0: A gap analysis case study in Tunisia and Morocco

Abstract

To improve the competitiveness of industry in Tunisia and Morocco, local authorities have adopted strategies to support industrial companies in modernizing their value-adding infrastructures. A sustained effort has been dedicated to encouraging industrial organizations to embrace the Industry 4.0 paradigm and technologies. Despite these continued efforts, engaging with Industry 4.0 is still difficult in countries like Tunisia and Morocco, particularly because industrial organizations struggle to find fresh graduates on the job market who are both skilled and qualified in Industry 4.0 operations. The contribution of this article is to initiate a process to better understand and assess the gap between industrial needs and academic offer with respect to Industry 4.0 skills and qualifications, considering the specificities of Tunisia and Morocco. We particularly focus on analyzing to what extent existing curricula in engineering education institutions satisfy or miss industrial needs and requirements in three core industrial business processes: maintenance, production, and quality (MPQ4.0). Therefore, a survey was conducted, from which a set of MPQ4.0 targeted skills and competencies were extracted and synthesized. Based on these skills and competencies, sample engineering education curricula are analyzed, gaps are identified, and recommendations for improvement are offered.

Integration of AI Use Cases in Training to Support Industry 4.0

“…In the project's early phases, the evaluation of industry requirements and the examination of disparities between those requirements and the academic offerings have been successfully conducted. This led to the formulation of the corresponding methodology, encompassing the following steps [35]: (Step 1) conducting a survey among 32 Tunisian and Moroccan companies about Industry 4.0 requirements and technologies in-use, (Step 2) conducting a deep literature review to identify the related skills for the domain of Industry 4.0, leading to documentation a set of essential skills, (Step 3) analyzing the existing curricula of project partner institutions in three targeted topics namely, maintenance, production, and quality, (Step 4) carrying out a cross-analysis, relying on the previous steps to identify the gap between Industry 4.0 skills and existing curricula in Morocco and Tunisia. The literature review and the survey have culminated in the identification of pertinent technological concepts associated with Industry 4.0 such as Big Data, Autonomous Robots, Industrial Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, Additive Manufacturing, Augmented Reality, and ML and AI.…”

“…Therefore, there is a need to develop a set of skills to design different types of decision-making systems based on the systems' dynamics. The detailed results of the survey are out of the scope of this work, but are presented in [35]. However, the survey enabled us to identify the main Industry 4.0 technological concepts that are now in use by some local industries as well as the scope of their usage.…”

Indústria 4.0 e o ensino de Engenharia de Produção: uma pesquisa com professores brasileiros e com pesquisadores da indústria 4.0.

“…Em outros estudos, a inclusão de conteúdos da i4.0 nos currículos de engenharia foi abordada por meio de surveys com professores, alunos e empresas (CHONG et al, 2018;BORDEL;ALCARRIA;ROBLES, 2019;ALABI et al, 2020;QUINAGLIA;MESQUITA, 2022;RALPH et al, 2022;MARTIN et al, 2019;NITISIRI;SETHANAN, 2021;SACKEY;BESTER;ADAMS, 2017;CHAENGPROMMA;PATTANAPAIROJ, 2022;LUNA;CHONG;JURBURG, 2022;ELKOSANTINI et al, 2023).…”