Training as a Machinewhisperer for Smart Industry

The digitized world means we have to learn a lot. How are production and information technology converging? How can we leverage the opportunities that creates? And how do we deal with questions of safety and workplace design?

So that young students at vocational colleges and persons in charge of companies are prepared to tackle the opportunities and challenges of the Smart Factory, the federal state and districts in Baden-Württemberg are promoting the establishment of “Learning Factories 4.0”. A real, digitized production environment is created at them and interdisciplinary skills can be taught there. You learn here how to become a “machine whisperer”. The colleges are fitted with cutting-edge equipment. After all, the “Smart Factory mindset” can be taken to heart only if the current state of the art is reflected in its many facets. Enterprises from the region and the Steinbeis Transfer Center for Industry 4.0 are involved in this project. euromicron’s subsidiary Elabo from Crailsheim in Swabia, an expert for digital manufacturing, is also on board. In a matter of months, it equipped two vocational colleges in Villingen-Schwenningen and Crailsheim /Schwäbisch Hall with networked workbenches, all the necessary software and training lines, including two-arm robots. The Learning Factories, the first of their kind, started their work at the end of 2016. Not only trainees, but also technicians and decision-makers from companies in the region, will learn here in future how the Smart Factory works. For euromicron’s subsidiary, the Learning Factories 4.0 are a key project and an opportunity moving ahead. They ensure that qualified junior staff are trained in the region and that managers and entrepreneurs from the SME sector are offered a sort of shop window for digitization of their companies. In addition – and an aspect that Elabo is proud of – the project demonstrates what expertise the hotbed of innovation from Crailsheim boasts: The advantages of the Smart Factory are already tangible.

 “The competitiveness of companies in today’s day and age stands and falls by the availability of experts with the qualifications for working under Smart Industry conditions,” stresses ELABO’s Managing Director Thomas Hösle. “That means it’s vital to adapt vocational training to the specific needs of Smart Industry and create appropriate learning environments.”  That is why digitized operational structures are reproduced as realistically as possible in the Learning Factory 4.0 – from preparation of offers, real-time production planning to individual production flows. As part of the manufacturing process, students can apply and deepen their knowledge in material processing and system operation. One focus of that is also on real-time networking of processes and machines.

The data management software EIM (Elabo Information Management) that ELABO has developed in-house plays a key role in implementing the digitized process chain. It is specifically tailored to conditions in small-batch production at small and medium-sized enterprises and enables networked manufacturing environments to be established. Since the EIM software is linked to a central SQL database, it is possible to access data management, variant management, process management and refined worker guidance systems from any computer with authorization to do so. The worker guidance systems offer students visual aid in the form of still and moving images, provide plans or statistics and supply written explanations of the individual work steps –  even in different languages if required. Use of the software solution thus gives trainees a vivid illustration at multiple levels of how a networked process environment functions and can be used to increase efficiency in operational processes.