Strategic PaRtnership for INdustry 4.0 innovation advanced Training

Unipi Team Leader: Gualtiero Fantoni, Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering

Industry 4.0 is undoubtedly the trending topic in the world of business and innovation since year 2017. It mainly refers to organizational methodologies for the production of goods or services that integrates production systems with digital technologies.
Several studies reveal that the opportunities offered by the Industry 4.0 turn out to be an unexplored frontier by the majority of companies, and most of the European companies are not sufficiently skilled to embrace the new paradigm. One of the major obstacles to the development of Industry 4.0 is the lack of digital culture within European companies and its spread can only rely on new training courses and on the hiring of highly specialized professional figures.

Within this scenario, SPRINT4.0 proposed to create a comprehensive approach for training and support, aimed at increasing the successful implementation of Industry 4.0 innovations and initiatives in European companies and ventures.

SPRINT4.0 courses allowed the students to solve real problems (provided by the target companies) with state of the art technology (ensured by the application providers) in a streamlined and coherent course set (ensured by the close cooperation of the universities).
The project enabled students, academics and industrial players to leverage knowledge, practice and innovation on Industry 4.0. They shared space, time and knowledge, and faced together the same challenges.

The main project aims were:

For Students: to provide students with a full set of skills to increase their employability in Industry 4.0-oriented companies; to provide students with entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial skills to carry out innovative Industry 4.0 related projects as new ventures or within existing companies

For the Universities: new teaching skills for education and training in the field of Industry 4.0; three new courses (minimum 3 ECTS each), to enrich university curricula; specific and innovative coaching activities, to support students developing industry-viable proof-of-concepts of projects and ideas.

For Companies:co-creating new solutions to real market/process problems and implementing proof-of-concept or even prototype; understanding the existing gap between the present status and the Industry 4.0 best in class; recruiting the best talents.

The project delivered the following outputs:
Audit methodologies on Industry 4.0 (IO1)
3 training courses focusing on Industry 4.0 related topics attended by students in 3 Countries (IO2, IO3, IO4)
Coaching methodologies to develop Industry 4.0 applications (IO5)
A Ready-to-use Guide to implement Industry 4.0 training courses (IO6)

To achieve these challenging objects, a solid consortium at european level was developed.

Universities and Research Institutes provided Methodologies & Tools for Research & Education on Industry 4.0, bringing their expertise and knowledge on specific Industry 4.0 fields and their educational tools. The academic partners were: University of Pisa (IT), BIBA-Bremer Institut für Produktion und Logistik (GER) and URL University (SP).

Along with the academic partners, the project includeD TOI - Zerynth (Italy) a company that brought new approaches towards Industry 4.0 applications, innovative methods and tools. Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini (IT) guaranteed the experience in the formalization and evaluation of training courses and impacts.

The SPRINT4.0 actions was conducted with a clear focus on Target Companies that brought to the project the point of view of real business, the need and willingness for Industry 4.0 applications: BarnaSteel (SP) - a large company working in the steel production sector; Selettra (IT) - a medium/large company operating in the production of electric wiring for the householding industry; OHS (GER) - a small company developing and manufacturing customer-tailored technical systems in the access control area.

SPRINT4.0 increased the overall ability of the innovation ecosystem at regional, national and European level to generate skills and innovative solutions in the field of Industry 4.0. In particular, Universities improved their educational offer on Industry 4.0 to respond to the market needs by creating specialized professional profiles.

SPRINT4.0 is the way to root in industry (SMEs included) a paradigm that now exists only in the theory or in the large tech companies.

Coordinator: UNIVERSITA DI PISA 

Other participants:

TOI SRL (Italy)
Selettra s.r.l. (Italy)
BIBA - BREMER INSTITUT FUER PRODUKTION UND LOGISTIK GMBH (Germany)
BARNA STEEL SA (Spain)
FONDAZIONE GIACOMO BRODOLINI(Italy)
UNIVERSITAT RAMON LLULL FUNDACIO (Spain)
OHS Engineering GmbH (Germany)
Intooition S.r.l.(Italy)

Start date: 01-09-2017

End date: 31-08-2020 

EU Grant: 422.111,55 €

Project website: http://www.sprint40.eu/