MANUSKILLS | Envisioning an advanced ICT-supported build-up of manufacturing skills for the Factories of the Future

Although the attraction of young talents is nowadays one of the most important factors for global manufacturing competitiveness, the sector is suffering an increasing difficulty in the recruitment of the brightest human resources. Younger students (i.e. primary and secondary schools) express generalized disinterest towards STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) field subjects, while university students struggle to find opportunities to improve their skills on the most innovative manufacturing topics. To this respect, ManuSkills project aimed at studying advanced ICT-based technologies and training methodologies able to increase the awareness and interest of youngsters for manufacturing and to support their acquisition of advanced manufacturing knowledge. ManuSkills developed six applications based on different ICT-based delivery mechanisms targeting children, teenagers and university students: o EcoFactory (Politecnico di Milano, Sintef, HighSkillz) o How to build a skateboard? (Dassault Systemes, Keonys) o BrickPlanner (Aalborg Universitet, HighSkillz) o Interactive Product Assembly (University of Patras) o Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Game (Politecnico di Milano, Sintef, HighSkillz) o Teaching Factory (University of Patras) The applications were tested in 21 educational institutions of 5 European countries, involving a total of 1137 students. Structured evaluations on the increase of awareness, interest and knowledge of manufacturing thanks to the activities were collected and elaborated.