A Novel Approach for Teaching IT Tools within Learning Factories

Universities around the world are developing strategies to include into their curricula trend topics from Industry 4.0, such as Cyber Physical Systems, robotics, process virtualization and advanced IT tools. However, at the state of the art in literature there is few evidence for educational environments in which all these components are fully integrated. SMALL Factory, an ongoing project in Politecnico di Torino, aims to develop an integrated learning factory based on the technologies triggering the fourth industrial revolution. Beside the transfer of technological skills, the laboratory allows the on field training of students in the use of open source IT tools such as PLM and ERP systems. The present paper aims to present the teaching methodology proposed within the SMALL Factory framework. The ultimate aim of this project is to replace the traditional software teaching, based on tutorials and simple case studies, with a learning by doing, integrated approach, in order to provide students with a comprehensive perspective of a modern manufacturing environment and to train their mindset to be responsive.