SMART skills 4.0 – Education for the future

From 20-24 September 2021, two Academia lecturers (Chair of the Strategic Council and organiser of the practical training) took part in the first training session with the working title Education for the Future: designing curricula to upskill the complex skills needed by Industry 4.0.

“Transnational cooperation initiative fostering developing forward thinking skills of students, teachers and workforce in sustainability relevant sectors posed by Business 4.0 trends through innovation in Business & engineering education and training” is the title of a 3-year project in which VSŠ Academia is a partner and in which partners from Italy (Inforelea Torino – a consortium for adult education), Greece (University of West Attica), Romania (University politehnica of Bucharest and S.C. Avantera srl – a consultancy company for strategic development) and Lithuania (Vilniaus Universitetas) are also participating.

The partners discussed the starting points for digital transformation and Industry 4.0, process technologies in Industry 4.0 (Internet of Things, advanced robotics, 3D printing), the skills needed for technology-intensive smart businesses (digital literacy, information processing skills, thinking competences, social and emotional skills to cope with dis-settlement), educational approaches for teaching and learning about future skills for digital progress, and key recommendations for Europe’s digital economy.

In the first of several working sessions, the partners were introduced to Guilds42, a technologically advanced company in the field of drones in construction, and visited OLIMAC SRL, a family-owned automated and robotic factory that produces high-quality agricultural machinery, and FONDAZIONE LINKS, an innovation centre on the premises of the Polytechnic of Turin, which employs 160 researchers to implement projects in the economy.

They also took part in Italian TECH Week – the Italian tech week that was taking place in Turin at the time. Special guests were Mr John Elkann (Ferrari), Director of the Automotive Industry, and, after a videoconference, Mr Elon Musk (Tesla). Their very interesting reflections on future developments are available at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MDs56gT-a8 (Italian Tech Week 2021, the fireside chat with Elon Musk and John Elkann).