New educational approach of innovative technologies and eco-advances in the marble industry

Field: Vocational education and training

Unipi Team Leader: Michele Lanzetta, Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering

Project partners are from the most relevant countries for the EU marble sector and are involved in providing consultancy, study programs, training and/or running educational projects for the marble industry, but none of them have already included in their VET curricula and/or training content the entire SUM of the mentioned drivers of skills for the project target group. Enhancing the skills of the professionals through a cross-disciplinary training program, combining professional and transversal skills about entrepreneurship, both technological-and-non innovation, financial and project management, work safety and environmental assessment, social responsibility and traceability is the aim of the project. In detail, MarbleTECH objectives are:
a. To anticipate the job-related requirements of the future managerial occupations more effectively in order to improve the transfer and use of new and existing knowledge on further skills needs among partner countries.
b. To create a common qualification framework that will result in better-qualified professionals involved in top and middle management in the European and Turkish marble industry.
c. To develop new methodologies and learning tools based on MOOCs for re-engineering the training process targeted to the existing and aspiring marble managers.

The project will focus in 3 different aspects of marble sector:
- Technology
The continuous changes in the technology internationally applied to the stone, both in quarrying the marble and during its manufacturing process, and the advantages that every new technology bring to the industry, makes that those companies using old techniques and equipment have very limited access to the international markets, not only because of the technology contribute to reduce costs in a sector where the material to be transformed is hard and difficult to be processes, as the stone is, but also because of this technology (Big Data, IoT, Block Chain,…) is crucial to meet the quality requirements of the international markets, very strict nowadays with the standards and quality requirements.
- Sustainable development
Besides technologies, the MarbleTECH project also address the sustainable development of the marble sector in Europe. The whole value chain must be controlled thanks to new technologies and knowledge related to LCA (Life Cycle Assessment). Furthermore, the final products, compared to the handled mass of rock vary from 5% to 10%, what makes that every process produce a big amount of waste that must be manage in the proper way. All this requires an important knowledge in order to minimize the impact in the environment.
Environment protection is a key issue in EU, and day-by-day more important in most developed countries, and if we foresee a long-term permanence and growing in the market, we must keep it in mind when developing the strategy for the sector. This makes still more important the contribution of the universities to the industry, due to the need of a knowledge that contribute to the economic development of the sector at the same time that keep at the minimum level the impact in the environment. To manage both issues at the same time requires a well planned and complete strategy, where HEI’s have an important role.
- Health protection
Health protection is also a key issue in the Marble industry using new technologies (monitoring of workers and machinery, improvement of health and safety technical analysis, etc.). EU partners in the project, both HEI’s and technologic centres, have a wide experience in developing and putting in practice, some of these procedures, as well as, in developing training materials for support their implementation in the Marble industry.

Coordinator: UNIVERSITA' DI PISA

Other participants:

C.G.S. DI COLUCCIA MICHELE & C. S.A.S. (Italy)
Institute for Technology Transfer and Innovations (Bulgaria)
CREATIVE THINKING DEVELOPMENT (Greece)
VIRTUAL CAMPUS LDA (Portugal)
INTERNAZIONALE MARMI E MACCHINE CARRARAFIERE SPA (Italy)
ASOCIACION EMPRESARIAL DE INVESTIGACION CENTRO TECNOLOGICO DEL MARMOL Y LA PIEDRA (Spain)
DESINOPE 323 S.L. (Spain)
BOGAZICI UNIVERSITESI (Turkey)

Start date: 01-02-2022

End date: 31-01-2025

EU Grant: 363.875,00 €

Project website: https://marbletech.eu/