Competence Development in Collaborative Industrial Internet of Things Erasmus Project

Project Title

Competence Development in Collaborative Industrial Internet of Things

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; International cooperation, international relations, development cooperation; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Europe Fit for Digital Age is one of the six policy priorities for EU. Europe needs to ensure that digital transformation is inclusive for all European companies, reaches all citizens in the Union, and respects the European values. EU has to guarantee the technological sovereignty and industry competitiveness. However, the challenge in many of the European countries is the digitization of companies, especially SMEs. SMEs are still not fully exploiting the opportunities offered by digital technology as less than a fifth of companies in the EU-28 are highly digitised (DESI 2019). For example, manufacturing industry could improve productivity substantially by applying digitization and principles of Industry 4.0 Program. The productivity of industry could be improved by utilizing IoT technology and the principles of Industrial internet of Things. This is not possible without skilled labour. This has also been recognized in European Commission’s New Industrial Strategy for a globally competitive, green and digital Europe, Digital Europe Programme, the New Recommendation on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning, Education and Training (ET2020) and the Digital Education Action Plan. Especially the Digital Europe Programme focuses on building strategic digital capacities of the EU and on facilitating the wide deployment of digital technologies, to be used by Europe’s citizens and businesses. The capacity development is necessary to support building a strong Network of Digital Innovation Hubs, where higher educational institutions play a crucial role in providing companies and public sector organizations support, expertise and training in deploying digital opportunities.The HEIs need to modify and complement their curricula to include training modules preparing the future and current workforce for the sustainable and digitalized manufacturing industry.

Based on the above, the Collaborative Industrial IoT aims at i) tackling the skills gaps and mismatches i.e. responding to the training challenge; ii) supporting bachelor level students in acquiring and developing the skills and key competences in order to be employed and support the digitalization of SMEs in the manufacturing sector; iii) providing innovative and transnational training and learning models. The key project’s results include

1. Collaborative Industrial IoT Curricula equivalent to 25 ECTS corresponding to the EQF level 6 (Bachelor level) integrated in the existing study offering of the partner HEIs in Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and France.
2. Five training modules (including training materials, and guides for teachers) to match the needs of the European manufacturing industry: Principles of Industry 4.0 and IIot; Network Programming in IIoT and IoT Application: Machine Vision, Digital Image Processing and Cloud Computing; Cybersecurity in IIoT Applications; Advanced Machining Technologies. Once the training product (five training modules) have been developed, they can be offered as ‘Open University’ courses for the current employees of SMEs and other manufacturing companies.
3. Model of Developing Learning Material in Cloud Environment, which intensifies transnational collaboration, internationalization, use of experts irrespective of the geographical location, and sustainability for international collaboration.
4. Capacity building of 15 teachers in both teaching methodology and approach suitable for Collaborative Industrial IoT and in Collaborative Industrial IoT Modules.
5. Capacity building of 25-125 students in Collaborative Industrial IoT. During the intensive learning, teaching and training programmes the students will also improve their transversal skills.

Engagement of regional, national, and European level stakeholders is of vital importance in order to scale-up the results of the project and to ensure the usage of the results by other European HEIs. The developed models, curricula and training modules, and guides enable to include parts or the whole curricula into other HEI study programme offering. The partners will also present the curricula and its training modules to the Centres of Excellence and Digital Innovation Hubs in their regions. This will promote Open University Courses in Collaborative Industrial IoT to the SMEs operating in the manufacturing industry. Regional SME representatives are involved in the quality assurance and evaluation of the project results, which will intensify the collaboration between the HEIs and the SMEs.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 286242 Eur

Project Coordinator

SEINAJOEN AMMATTIKORKEAKOULU OY & Country: FI

Project Partners

• RIGAS TEHNISKA UNIVERSITATE
• KAUNO TECHNOLOGIJOS UNIVERSITETAS
• ASSOCIATION D’ENSEIGNEMENT TECHNIQUE SUPERIEUR dite ESAIP
• TALLINNA TEHNIKAULIKOOL