FactoryBricks: a New Learning Platform for Smart Manufacturing Systems

Manufacturing industries are facing radical changes under the technological acceleration of Industry 4.0. The manufacturing workforce is not ready for such disruptions due to the lack of vertical skills on digital technologies. Production planning and control of manufacturing systems is often an experience-based art. Further, the companies need of offering training paths for long-life learning of their employees finds several obstacles in the availability of skilled trainers and the trainee’s low engagement with traditional learning models. This paper presents how the FactoryBricks project aims at overcoming the aforementioned issues. The project delivers effective training courses to enable the uptake of industrial technologies and smart manufacturing systems for professionals, either executives or technicians. Beside digital learning contents, the learners are offered an interaction with lab-scale models of production systems built with modular components such as LEGO®. The courses are designed in a modular way, and aim to teach manufacturing concepts in three main topics: (1) the physical system and its dynamics, (2) the physical-digital data connections for smart online analytics, and (3) the exploitation of digital models for production. The paper also presents the results of the prototypical implementation of the project

A New Learning Factory Experience Exploiting LEGO For Teaching Manufacturing Systems Integration

Involving and stimulating students through intensive work in computer laboratories and simulation projects might be a challenging task, often due to the lack of the real manufacturing system that must be modeled and improved. Indeed, studying a manufacturing system that cannot be observed represents a real obstacle for student effective learning. In this paper, we describe the "LEGO FACTORY" initiative, an extra-curricular experience within the Master Degree Study Program in Mechanical Engineering of Politecnico di Milano. The initiative is open to students from any study course of the university. The goal is to exploit learning-by-playing principles to offer scholars the possibility to understand the most common issues in the design and management of manufacturing systems, with a focus on system integration. A miniaturized production system made with LEGO® MINDSTORMS® is provided to students who are asked to accomplish a project aiming at the improvement of the system performances. The participants work in teams and must introduce design modifications and develop technical solutions to address the requirements. The experience is described with the hope that the approach can be replicated in other environments

Low-cost and Portable Process Control Laboratory Kit

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate a new design of low-cost and portable laboratory kit that is prospective for supporting teaching and learning on the automation process. The kit consists of the water tank filling system (sizes of 50 mL; as a model for describing reallistic tank in the plant) equipped with a programmable logic controller (PLC) integrated with SCADA system, human machine interface (HMI) monitor, reservoir, temperature, water level sensors, mixer, and heater. To be adaptable in any types of classroom, the kit was placed on the portable table (length x width x height of 100 x 50 x 150 cm). To approach the industrial tank system in industry, the tank was designed to be mixed and connected to other tank, and the temperature and water volumetric (water level) was controllable. To examine the impact of the designed kit on the improvement of teaching and learning process, the problem based learning (PBL) approach was also conducted in class. The economic analysis result showed that the present kit is inexpensive and portable, compared to other commercially available kits/devices. The PBL results showed that the kit is simple and to give better illustrations for students to comprehend the process control system in the realistic application in industry. Further developments of this kit is potentially implemented as an experimental tool for undergraduate students