COLLABORATIVE COURSES TAILORED FOR AND WITH INDUSTRY – HOW TO SPREAD RESEARCH RESULTS AND GET AN IMPACT IN INDUSTRY

Research needs to reach the companies to be possible to apply and implement. Manufacturing industry is facing a great challenges of how to keep and develop their current staff as well as hiring new staff, keeping up with the requirements for new knowledge. A step towards reducing these problems was initiated in a project at University Westcalled ProdEx – Professional courses for manufacturing industry on advanced level. Here several subjects were targeted within manufacturing technology but currently we would like to focus the courses planned and given within additive manufacturing. University West has a major research group within additive manufacturing and it is a hot topic within industry. Based on observed needs and wishes a first suggestion for tailored courses was sent out to industry. A big interest was picked up and a joint collaborative meeting was held. Together with a number of companies we started planning for one or more courses within additive manufacturing. The final suggestion became four courses, one initial course presenting the research front and the state of the art technology and different methods available, two courses focusing on material properties and one focusing on the business case and how to design for additive manufacturing. Each course was built up with a number of lecturers and a coordinator putting all parts together. Each lecture was given by a researcher, specialist at the topic at hand, larger parts by the professors and smaller more specialized parts by Ph.D. students. The courses also had the focus of work integrated learning which mean that each student (company participant) was to apply their earned new knowledge back at their company and present the outcome. They had to bring in different examples and each course was designed by knowledge exchange. Both researchers and students benefitted from the discussions and the new applications presented and even found interesting new research questions. We could observe how the students could share and exchange knowledge, but also bring back knowledge to the team they work within daily. One company realised through taking the course that this technology is not mature enough for them, another company realized new possibilities within the company and a third company saw new potential for new market segments. By recording and using skype we could broadcast the lectures outside the university campus and reach companies and students also outside Sweden. But is also made it possible to follow the lectures from the company site. By creating top of the line courses we could spread research results but also form a very interesting forum for exchange and discussions. For many companies this could be a first step towards engaging in future research projects and for the researchers it is and interesting channel to real applied problems on the manufacturing floor. The students and the companies were very pleased with the course content and the researchers found it to be very challenging and exiting to spread their research and start a dialog in this way. This creating a win-win-situation for all parties.