Experiences in Running a Professional Course on Digitally-Enabled Production in Collaboration Between Three Swedish Universities

Abstract

Needs for new competences and knowledge arise as industry 4.0 evolves in increasingly digitalized production. This development entails that job transformations and future skills need attention from the perspective of industry 5.0, where human and machine find ways of working together to improve production performance. Facing this perspective, one challenge is a growing need for novel lifelong learning initiatives, to meet emerging and altering occupations for the fulfilment of future skill requirements. This challenge is addressed here by portraying a case where three Swedish universities have formed a distinctive collaboration to develop a flexible (i.e. blended) course for professionals, in the subject of Digitally-enabled production. The purpose is to develop a sustainable collaboration between the universities and create a course format on master level addressing lifelong learning for the increasingly digitalized production. The ambition is to increase the impact of the universities respective efforts by sharing resources and utilizing individual specialized expertise to develop a practical and relevant course that can reach a larger target group. The course encompasses industry 4.0 readiness on three levels of production systems; plant-, production cell-, and component level; to adopt a holistic view of digitalization in production. We followed an action research approach for continuously collecting and documenting our experiences during the course development, implementation, and dissemination of the course. Within the frame of action research, an explorative case study describes and analyzes the initiative. The results highlight challenges and opportunities for succeeding with this form of co-produced course. The joint course gives professionals possibilities to work on cases from their own companies with expert supervision from three manufacturing levels to address complex challenges in industry 4.0 implementation. To conclude, the importance of lifelong learning in relation to the human-centric approach of industry 5.0 is emphasized as a future direction.

May the force of lifelong learning be with you – sustainable organizational learning in HEIs meeting competence needs in industry

“…However, it is important to understand how academia can better meet industrial competence needs. It is essential to have internal reflection among different functions at HEIs to facilitate organizational learning when changing traditional academic structures (Holland, 2019;Eriksson et al, 2022). Hence, the themes for discussion in the focus groups were designed to bring forth and grasp previous, current and future aspects of organizational learning taking place or required to take place at the HEI organization.…”

“…However, dealing with fast and frequent technological advancement, strategically and continuously upgrading competences is challenging (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997). This means an increasing need for novel initiatives for lifelong learning and competence development of professionals for a sustainable future manufacturing industry (Eriksson et al, 2022).…”

O Estado Da Arte Sobre Transformação Digital E Blended Education

“…As modalidades não presenciais de ensino também são responsáveis por afetar as tomadas de decisões das organizações educacionais no rumo à implantação de soluções tecnológicas a fim de flexibilizar o ensino para a promoção do desenvolvimento de competências essenciais para o crescimento pessoal e profissional dos alunos (GALVIS; CARVAJAL, 2022). Assim, uma vez que tais decisões foram diretamente afetadas pela pandemia de Covid-19, que acelerou uma reforma digital mundial (NG, 2022), foi determinante o desenvolvimento de currículos flexíveis e capazes de fomentar a aprendizagem para a vida e ao longo dela, em um mundo cada vez mais digitalizado (ERIKSSON et al, 2022).…”

“…Para Azman, Zaibon e Shiratuddin (2016) e Kuhn e Jungmann (2018), a utilização de novas ferramentas tecnológicas forma um amplo conjunto de conhecimentos, alfabetização midiática e soft skills. Ao passo que profundas mudanças ocorrem na sociedade, torna-se primordial adaptar essa sociedade às novas demandas tecnológicas e produtivas, que, segundo Eriksson et al (2022), contemplam as necessidades de competências e conhecimentos exigidos pelo mercado de trabalho, cada vez mais digitalizado. Assim, é reforçada a necessidade de as instituições revisarem os seus programas por intermédio de métodos que permitam essa adaptação à nova realidade (BERNAT, 2016), além de promover o desenvolvimento da sociedade pela informação e ampliar o universo cultural do indivíduo (GUCHINSKAYA; KRAEVA, 2017).…”

5.0 as a New Stakeholder Responsibility

“…The Supply Chain 4.0 has a highly technological environment focus, while Supply Chain 5.0 keeps this technological aspect, but also considers a balanced human-technological environment, mainly allowed by "cobots" (collaborative robots). Other scholars talk about the importance of lifelong learning in relation to the human-centric approach of industry 5.0 is emphasized as a future direction (Eriksson et al, 2022).…”