Concept, Challenges, and Learning Benefits Developing an Industry 4.0 Learning Factory with Student Projects

Abstract

A wide range of skills, knowledge, and competencies are required and expected from students to solve current problems for digitalization. One opportunity to teach and gain knowledge for the digitalization of manufacturing systems is the use of learning factories. Motivated by previously developed learning factories for digitalization in manufacturing, the research team of the production-planning lab of the University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer decided to build its own learning factory. The paper provides an overview of the developed learning factory, physical and digital structure, requirements, challenges, and learning benefits to build a learning factory with the aid of student projects. The paper concludes with a summary and ideas for future work.