Advanced manufacturing has a high priority on the political agenda of the European Union, as a key enabler that will lead European society towards a higher industrial competitiveness, sustainable growth and job creation, and improved societal well-being. Industry represents nearly the 25% of the European GDP and the low rate of new students selecting technical related studies urgently requests new actions to engage pupils towards manufacturing.
The latest trends in manufacturing have direct implications for the skill requirements, and there is a clear need to promote better policies, measures and initiatives, increasing awareness and sharing good practices. Specifically, there is a need to reconsider the current approach towards the education and training of manufacturing professionals and to develop new/advanced models that would be better aligned with the needs of both employers and (future) employees.
The EMBRYO project has the PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVE TO ENGAGE 14-16 YEARS OLD PUPILS IN MANUFACTURING RELATED STUDIES using the sustainability and the digitalization of manufacturing processes as a demonstrator.
Pupils at secondary schools (Spain-Germany) will be trained on manufacturing using the Project Based Learning methodology. For this, initial lectures about Arduino programming and Manufacturing processes will be given at secondary schools by the teachers and project partners.
After this initial step, the students will be divided by groups to solve a given challenge. I the first year, the students will focus developing metal bending processes to finish manufacturing a product. Some examples are mobile stands, personalized bent shapes, etc.
After 5 years and the upscaling of the new concept, EMBRYO aims at training more than 5000 new students in at least 5 different European countries involving companies form different companies in the yearly challenge to be solved.