Training Advanced Skills for Sustainable Manufacturing: A Digital Serious Game

With the rapid development of manufacturing towards the vision of Industry 4.0, considerable efforts should be done in order to improve the manufacturing skills of young generations and to prepare them to the challenges of the new industrial world. For this reason, the paper first analyzes the learning requirements for the education and training about advanced manufacturing topics and the most suitable educational approaches to satisfy them, identifying digital game-based learning (DGBL) as one of the most promising. On this basis, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Game, a digital game (DG) aiming at supporting the comprehension of LCA for sustainable manufacturing, is presented. Thanks to its high scalability and focus on the practical implications of the use of LCA in an industrial context, the suitability of LCA Game for both universities and companies is shown. Finally, the potentialities of digital game-based learning applications for manufacturing are discussed.