Abstract:

As a result of the advances made in technology, technical training seems to be a necessary process in order to keep the human workforce up to date. This workforce can be divided in two separate groups: the unexperienced workforce (students or recent graduates) and the experienced people. For the first group, technical training should offer (or simulate) a up to date real scenario that allows the trainee to get more experience in the field. For the second group the technical training should allow new skill development based on the previous experience. For example the Romanian company ASTI Automation develops industrial training equipment and training courses in the field of industrial automation. In the past 3 years the company increase the field of activity by providing technical courses as a continuous solution for keeping the workforce up to date. By leveraging the industrial background, from 2007, the company started to develop technical training equipment for universities or technical school and for training centres, as a constant promoter for new industrial technologies. Currently ASTI Automation deliver a complete educational solution from the beginning of the professional career to the end by keeping the workforce up to date with periodical training sections. For universities and technical school, the company can offer training kits for laboratories. The training kits includes small scale industrial processes, PLC-s, motor drivers and didactic exercises related to the approved programs of study. The exercises provide an incremental level of activity by providing new skill development in a realistic environment. For this purpose, ASTI Automation developed two levels of difficulty: The beginner level is suitable for the new students and allows industrial process simulation. The focus is on understand the concepts, programming learning and electrical design understanding. The advanced level allows students to interact with real process equipment (sensors, transducers, drivers, industrial communication, PLC-s, SCADA systems, etc.) with a focus on electric and automation design. The solution for the second group is based on skill upgrade and requalification. To provide a continuous training process, the company developed his one training centre. The training sessions are tailored to the customer needs by dynamically resource allocation. The sessions are deployed in ASTI Automation training centre or in the customer location. One important factor in keeping the strong bound between the industrial field to the educational process was involving PhD students into training sessions. This allows a bidirectional knowledge transfer between the two parts. The Flexible Assembly Line is one example of complex training system developed in ASTI Automation. It is a small-scale assembly line that include with real industrial equipment. It provides a real scenario for industrial automation skill development. One such system was implemented in a dual school training centre in order to support the bound between apprenticeships in a company and vocational school. It offers students the tools they need in order to apply the theoretical notions learn in their educational curriculum. Also, the system offers the hardware base for algorithms optimisation at a PhD level.

Keywords:

Continuous training process, training kits for laboratories, real process equipment, skill upgrade, requalification, bidirectional knowledge transfer.