Learning Factories for Sustainable Manufacturing - A Generic Design Approach

Abstract

A learning factory is a learning environment that promotes the competent development of people. Highly qualified employees are a basic prerequisite for competitive and future-oriented production. Therefore, companies and universities increasingly tend to develop and operate learning factories. So far, existing learning factories are mainly used to mediate subjects as energy- and lean-management. In addition to these topics, it becomes increasingly important for many companies to sustainably produce now and in the future. However this topic is rarely taught in learning factories. This paper presents a concept of how companies and universities can qualify people in learning factories for the new challenges arising from a sustainable manufacturing strategy. For this, content and methods will be identified which affect the three dimensions of sustainability. Secondly, the feasibility to apply these contents and methods in a learning factory is assessed.

Simulation in engineering education: The transition from physical experimentation to digital immersive simulated environments

“…Goerke et al, 14 Helm et al 22 Blochl and Schneider, 27 Gronau et al 28 and Grabler et al 29 Energy efficiency & sustainability Designing energy-efficient production systems; Ecofriendly product design Blume et al, 17 Abele et al 30 and Kreitlein et al 31…”

A Literature Survey of Energy Sustainability in Learning Factories

“…Although the term implies educational purposes, LF can be used for research and apprentices training like the ETA (Energy efficiency, Technology and Application centre) in Darmstadt [6]. LF is both an organisation that interacts with the inner and outer influences, and a teaching environment where people receive training on specific methods and procedures [7]. Therefore, LF's main deliverables can be technological and/or organisational (if research focused), or developing the participant competencies (if focused on teaching and training) [4].…”

“…Resources efficiency is also linked to the lean management that is part of the training delivered in LF [11]. Broadly speaking, any activity/ process that do not add value is waste, and trainees should be aware of waste types [7]. This includes energy and other resource, but energy obtained from fossil fuel suffers price fluctuations and impacts the climate.…”

“…Taking another look at the word cloud in Figure 2, it can be seen that the technical aspect occupies the scene, whereas the pedagogical concepts are less represented, which reveals the need of further work on this aspect. LF relies mainly on the principals of learning-by-doing with a shorter theoretical training [7]. Nevertheless, helping the trainee gain a new competence is the heart of LF didactics.…”

“…[6] Learning by doing [7], [9] The constructivistic learning theory [9] Constructivist didactics [11] Action-oriented learning [12], [18] Game-based learning and simulation games [16] Problem-oriented interaction, reflexive self-education…”