Under coordination of the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), the project MSIE4.0 – Curriculum Development of Master's Degree Program in Industrial Engineering for Thailand Sustainable Smart Industry will be run by a consortium of 9 partner entities with a total funding of around 1 million euros.
The project is proposed to enhance the capacity and ability of universities in Thailand for the delivery of a high quality competence-based curriculum for Master's degree in industrial engineering that supports sustainable smart industry (Industry 4.0), conforms to European Qualifications Framework (EQF) and is applicable to EU partner universities.
"The main goal of this project is to develop learning curriculum, tools and methodologies, focused on master degree-level education, aiming at training engineers for Industry 4.0", Rui Lima, project coordinator at the UMinho, refers. "Industry 4.0 is a topic under discussion. There are already a few different views on this matter, focused mainly on connectivity's technological convergence and also on the connection between a number of key themes related to the future of industry, such as digital manufacturing, internet-of-things (IoT), cyber-physical systems, big data, augmented and virtual reality, additive manufacturing or collaborative robots. Currently, we are looking to define which competences are required from industry professionals and also how to develop these competences. This is a quite innovative work, which is still at an exploratory stage of research", the researcher refers. The project also counts on 3 industrial partners – Bosch, Continental and Leoni, companies which have been collaborating directly with DPS, aiming at assisting the research team in gathering relevant data to define a skills framework.
"The EEUM is already an international reference as far as active learning methodologies are concerned", Rui Lima refers. "In this regard, our role will be to design master degree disciplines whilst identifying the aforementioned competences. To do so, we have joined elements from the directive committees of three master degrees offered by our department, which we are certain will be of added-value to this project", he adds.
The UMinho's research team includes also EEUM's researchers Rui Sousa, Teresa Monteiro and José Telhada, as well as Diana Mesquita, researcher at the Institute of Education of the UMinho. The consortium is constituted by 9 universities, 6 from Thailand, 1 from Romania, 1 from Poland, apart from the UMinho. The project MSIE4.0 is expected to start by the end of October 2017 and will run for three years.
"In both consortia [MSIE4.0 e EXTEND], the UMinho is the second partner with more allocated funding. This represents the relevant position we have reached in research for learning methodologies on which these projects are based", the researcher concludes.
