Presenting the UCN Industrial Playground for teaching and researching Industry 4.0

The demand of Industry 4.0 skills in SMEs have increased over the last couple of years. The enterprises are experiencing a larger demand for upholding a high level of knowledge and know-how in the hunt for the engineers of tomorrow. Also, there is a demand from the employees to upskill interdisciplinary fields within the areas of Automation-, Production- and IT engineering. With a steppingstone in the Industry 4.0 and Learning Factory setup, this paper proposes a concept for an Industrial Playground (IP). The concept consists of industry graded and non-industry graded components in a hybrid setup, between traditional and hyperflexible production. Attention is on scalability from small mockup production machinery to fully implemented manufactory cells and systems. The IP is developed in collaboration between UCN and local SMEs. The primary objective is to transfer knowledge and know-how from the Learning Factory concept to both students and employees. The secondary objective is to equip both parties for a redefinition of the mindsets in the SMEs of Northern Denmark towards the digitalization of the manufacturing industry. With a focus on a modular learning setup, the IP concentrates on skill improvement within individual aspects of a production flow. Executed with theoretical and practical training sessions, based on workshops and projects, the evaluation is based on a summative method and was submitted to more than 120 students and researchers. This paper will present the concept of the IP as a part of the Learning Factory setup at UCN. It will continue with a description and evaluation of the first case studies within the modular skill improvement aspect based on the learning approach and didactive method Reflective Practice-based Learning.