Introducing the Upskilling Framework - A Learning Factory Approved for Robotics Focused on Knowledge Transfer and Creation

The demand for Industry 4.0 skills has increased over the last few years. Specifically, small and medium-sized companies struggle to obtain the needed competencies on both floor and manager levels. A concept called Learning Factory has emerged to work with and teach the mindset of Industry 4.0. This concept provides a high-level idea for training and educating all interests in an Industry 4.0 setting. This paper presents a framework built on the learning factory concept called the upskilling Framework. This Framework focuses on teaching and training vocational educated in its first iteration. The Framework was used to design a course in industrial robotics and was tested on a student group in the Automation Engineering program. It will continue by describing and evaluating the first case studies within the modular knowledge, skill, and competencies. The results show that the Framework supports knowledge transfer within the subject of the session, and there are indications of knowledge creation within the materials from participants due to the Framework’s nature of giving a base knowledge by knowledge transfer, thereby establishing a base for learning new tools to support knowledge creation.