FactoryBricks: a New Learning Platform for Smart Manufacturing Systems

Manufacturing industries are facing radical changes under the technological acceleration of Industry 4.0. The manufacturing workforce is not ready for such disruptions due to the lack of vertical skills on digital technologies. Production planning and control of manufacturing systems is often an experience-based art. Further, the companies need of offering training paths for long-life learning of their employees finds several obstacles in the availability of skilled trainers and the trainee’s low engagement with traditional learning models. This paper presents how the FactoryBricks project aims at overcoming the aforementioned issues. The project delivers effective training courses to enable the uptake of industrial technologies and smart manufacturing systems for professionals, either executives or technicians. Beside digital learning contents, the learners are offered an interaction with lab-scale models of production systems built with modular components such as LEGO®. The courses are designed in a modular way, and aim to teach manufacturing concepts in three main topics: (1) the physical system and its dynamics, (2) the physical-digital data connections for smart online analytics, and (3) the exploitation of digital models for production. The paper also presents the results of the prototypical implementation of the project.