IN4WOOD: DEVELOPING AN ONLINE AND FREE TRAINING COURSE TO ADAPT THE CURRICULA OF WORKERS AND MANAGERS OF WOOD AND FURNITURE SECTOR TO THE SKILLS REQUIRED BY INDUSTRY 4.0

The EU (Europe Union) is moving towards a new industrial revolution, considered to be the fourth such leap forward, the so-called I4.0 (Industry 4.0). In short, I4.0 is characterized by the use of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) to transform the way in which companies and manufacturers work; to transform the traditional factory into a smart factory by using sensors, wireless communications, last generation networks, intelligent robots and machines, and big data analytics, among others.

The new digital industry will promise to increase the flexibility in manufacturing, mass customization, better quality and improved productivity. EU is promoting the industrial change through new industrial policy and funding in research and infrastructures. But the change also includes challenges like training workers, update competences in managers, and adjust the curricula of VET (Vocational Education and training) and HE (High Education), to acquire the skills required by I4.0.

In this regard, the Project IN4WOOD, funded by EU Erasmus+ Program, aims specifically to bring this 4th revolution to the specific sector of furniture industry, developing a training course for supporting furniture manufacturers and wood industry to understand, to deploy, and to use the key enabling technologies of I4.0 in their own business, as well as to improve the competitiveness of their enterprises. Moreover, the developed teaching materials can be used in VET and HE level, to train the future workers of this sector.

In this paper, we present the work is being carried out in In4WOOD Project. The main goal is to design, develop and recognize a Joint Curricula for filling the skills gaps in I4.0 related to the technologies and topics for production and management of the wood and furniture industry. To do this, we are working on the development of an online and free training course through a software platform which contains all the materials. These are being designed by using, not only the typical slides and text documents, but also the latest and most revolutionary educational methodologies, such as gamification, video pills, flipped classroom and PLE (Personal Learning Environment). The training course will be tested by a pilot, carried out in four European countries. The results extracted from the pilot will help us to improve the platform and materials in order to launch a stable free and online training platform.