New Competences in a Digitalized Shopfloor – A Modular Training Concept for Learning Factories

Abstract

Digitalization and Industry 4.0 have a major impact on work processes, human interaction and leadership in many workplaces, one of them being production. For employees, this results in a change of work tasks and job requirements. Therefore, digitalization and Industry 4.0 create a need for extensive competence development of the workforce. Especially, SFM currently undergoes an immense transformation. Due to an increasing availability and quality of real-time data, new forms of collaboration in production become possible. These possibilities can lead to an improvement regarding production processes, hence, developing or maintaining a competitive advantage. One example is the concept of autonomous assembly teams, which have a high degree of autonomy in their work planning, work prioritization, continuous improvement and problem solving activities. This article presents a holistic approach for a definition and analysis of relevant competences for employees in the production sector. Based on this analysis, a modular training concept is designed to improve the identified competences in learning factories. This is followed by an explanation, which enables employers and employees to identify their need for competence development and how to select specific training modules. Finally, we present a universal approach to implement these modules in different learning factories.

Keywords: Industry 4.0, Digitalization, Training Concepts, Human-Centred Production Systems, Competences