Abstract:

At present, the creation of industrial value in the main industrialized countries is shaped by the development towards the fourth stage of industrialization, the so-called Industry 4.0. Industry 4.0 has as its essential objective the interconnection of industrial production with related industries (logistics), in order to achieve intelligent manufacturing processes. The ultimate goal of Industry 4.0 is to make industrial production more agile, flexible and customer-centric. The concepts behind Industry 4.0 (smart manufacturing, cyber systems, the Internet of Things and cloud computing), even if they are not entirely new, must be introduced in the university training of engineers, because engineers are the main vectors of their implementation in industrial processes. This paper presents how these concepts were introduced in the training of engineers at Mechatronics study programme (Bachelor level) at the "Lucian Blaga" University of Sibiu. It is here noticeable that Mechatronics itself, both as branch of technical sciences and as study programme represents a synthesis of concepts from Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Electronics, Computers Science and Control systems. The work presents the way in which the curriculum of the study program was re-designed, the subjects on which it was intervened and what changes were made to the syllabuses. The ways of action and the methods used are presented for all the three variants of the Mechatronics study programme: the version with Romanian as teaching language, the version with English as teaching language and the dual-education version (in Romanian, with nine supplementary weeks of practical activities, unfolded at partner industrial companies).

Keywords:

Industry 4.0, Mechatronics, curriculum design, syllabuses.