Friday, 6/30/2017
The students from the
Master programme in Engineering Projects Management (EPM) promoted a seminar
entitled “COMPETIND 4.0 – Competencies for Industry” on the 9th June
2017. The event took place at the Campus of Azurém, in Guimarães.
The students from the Master programme in Engineering Projects
Management (MGPE) from the Department of Production and Systems (DPS) of the
School of Engineering of the University of Minho (EEUM) organised the seminar
“COMPETIND 4.0 – Competencies for the Industry”. In order to put into practice
some of the skills the students acquired in the first year of the second cycle
programme, this event recalled the paths that have been taken since the
Industrial Revolution to Industry 4.0, which are the future challenges this
industry imposes and what kind of competences the professionals need to have in
it.
The seminar counted with the opening session by the speakers Rui Lima
(Associate Professor from the DPS), José Cardoso Teixeira (Director of the
Department of Civil Engineering), Rosa Vasconcelos (Vice-Dean of the EEUM) and
also Cláudio Alves (Director of the DPS). In addition, the session had a video
presentation by Manuel Caldeira Cabral, Minister of Economy, who reinforced the
role of the digitalisation of Industry 4.0 in Portugal: “Portugal has a good
software industry – such as the companies that are here today – already
established in sectors such as automotive or machinery, but has also a whole
set of traditional industries that have greatly improved their quality and their
ability to respond in recent years. Therefore, today they are able to produce
with great flexibility and diversity”.
After this session, the presentations of the four invited companies were
held. Francisco Almada Lobo – from Critical Manufacturing, Ricardo Almeida –
from Primavera Business Software Solutions, Valentino Pereira – from ITEC,
Iberiana Technology and Pedro Vaz Silva – from Bosch Car Multimedia – focused
their lectures on the impact of Industry 4.0 on product customisation. The
speakers believe that a good association between software companies and
traditional industries could open up new markets and enable smaller companies
to reach out to the world, following a global thinking logic. “Industry 4.0 is
an area that involves a variety of technologies in different maturities’
states. From an application, big data, cloud, machine learning and artificial
intelligence point of view, I believe that all these types of technology are still
underdeveloped. This type of events allows people to become aware of all these
areas that need to be developed”, Francisco Almada Lobo, CEO from Critical
Manufacturing clarified.
Concerning the importance of these events for the EEUM, Rui Lima
believes that this seminar allowed “to bring the School [of Engineering] even
closer to companies and gain their view of profile characteristics of an Engineer
that will be closer to their needs”. In terms of the organisation of the event
and the fact that it was organised by MGPE students, the professor from the DPS
of the EEUM added that “COMPETIND 4.0 has brought students to develop real
projects that enabled them to develop their own skills”.
The MGPE of the EEUM is a cross-departmental education project of the
EEUM (Department of Production and Systems, Department of Information Systems
and Department of Civil Engineering) which counts on the human resources and
know-how available in the thee departments. Therefore, this interdisciplinary
is considered a capital gain in the area of Project Management.
+ info: http://www.dps.uminho.pt/; https://www.facebook.com/events/1017570861708485/
