Learning Factories and Sustainable Engineering—Competencies for Students and Industrial Workforce

Abstract

Sustainability and the circular economy are becoming increasingly important for industry and academia. Learning factories at higher education institutions around the globe attempt to educate students and industrial workers on these topics through specially developed training modules. To successfully implement measures to mitigate issues such as climate change, product life cycle considerations-in which different phases may require different worker competencies-is indispensable. In this context we provide some evaluation of learning factory use cases regarding sustainability. The use cases are evaluated on product life cycle phases and respective worker sustainability and circular economy competencies. The results show that the majority of the use cases focus on the production life cycle phase; product development, product use and end-of-life have either not or very rarely been addressed. Our general conclusions and implications relate to these findings with a recommendation that learning factories expand their training capabilities.

Semiconductor Manufacturing Business Revisited: Good Old Days at AT&T Bell Labs Microelectronics Plant in Orlando, Florida

“…This transformation has been elusive to a substantial extent since it was postulated by Elkington over 25 years ago [25]. Sustainability is increasingly important for industry and academia, and efforts are being made to address this topic as holistically as possible [26]. Energy, water, rare earth metals, rare gases, power-grid outages, geopolitical conflicts, political wars, global pandemics, and the impact of increasing fires, floods, droughts, and other natural disasters are among the interrupters in the supply of chip production.…”

Revision of the Learning Factory Morphology

“…Processes in LFs should be authentic, multi-stage and comprise both technical and organizational aspects [3]. Regarding the importance of sustainability in production, the topic circular economy will be more relevant in the future [8]. Therefore, additional demonstrated phases in the life cycles of the product, factory and technology have been added.…”