Realization of a learning environment to promote sustainable value creation in areas with insufficient infrastructure

To increase the rationally demanded sustainability with its ecologic, environmental and social dimensions, innovative technology shall be exploited. For example waste can be used by means of closed loop material cycles for the production of new products. The understanding of such material cycles can help to deal responsibly with resources. Considering the limited awareness of more than seven billion humans on globe about the sustainability challenge, the teaching and learning productivity has to be boosted to hitherto not achieved levels. Complex interdependencies have to be scaled down to daily life experiences, so that people of different skill levels or even laypersons can draw a practical benefit and become capable of self-sustainable value creation. How locally available plastic waste can be used for the production of new products in areas with insufficient technical and social infrastructure is explained in detail on the example of the mobile learning environment CubeFactory. This mini-factory was designed to support knowledge transfer for sustainable manufacturing competencies, independently from the need of any infrastructure. In this context, the term “infrastructure” contains all technical as well as social necessities needed for production. These may be the access to a durable energy and material supplies, as well as the access to machine tools or knowledge. Sustainability utilizes all elements to its advantage to serve as a beneficial tool for the society, the local economy and the environment. The CubeFactory represents an example of how to produce on local level what is immediately needed. It integrates a 3D printer as a manufacturing tool, a recycler for the filament production, a solar-powered energy supply and the knowledge for the application of this resource-saving technology

Transformation of a traditional face-to-face engineering study program into a digital online program - A case study of global production engineering

The need for Digital Education (DE) in higher education has been growing for the past years, as the landscape of education became more diverse and global. It has become apparent with the COVID-19 pandemic that, in terms of width, DE had been mostly neglected so far. In the past year, the master program Global Production Engineering (GPE) at Technische Universität Berlin has been enhanced by a complete digital track, called GPE-Digital. In order to design this online study program a student survey was conducted and lecturers have been interviewed. The results were analysed and requirements for both lecturers and students were identified. Chances and challenges have been identified and a “tool box” for teaching and learning was developed. It contains a multimedia studio, a learning platform, a cloud platform et cetera. Lecturers are supported to develop and adapt their lecture-concepts and to choose the tools needed, which led to a variance of teaching-concepts. In this paper, after presenting the findings of both the interviews and the survey, the “tool box” is presented and its various possibilities for implementation are shown by the example of four different courses offered at GPE-Digital. These examples contain both synchronous and asynchronous teaching and different approaches of preparing joint sessions and lectures. Finally, based on the courses the benefits and challenges are discussed and rough approaches for exploiting the benefits and tackling the challenges are given

CubeFactory2 – an Off-Grid and Circular 3D-Printing Mini-Factory

The CubeFactory2 is a self-sufficient and luggage-sized production unit illustrating the concept of sustainable manufacturing through circularity and resource conservation. It is circular in the sense that it can create new products out of waste. It embeds a Fuse Filament Fabrication 3D-printer whose input material is supplied by a recycling unit producing filament out of thermoplastic waste. It saves resources in the sense that it embeds renewable energy and material supply to recycle and 3D-print without the need for further infrastructure. In its current state of development, the purpose of the CubeFactory2 is primarily illustrative and to support awareness on sustainable manufacturing. If offers an experienceable application of the concepts of circularity and resource conservation. The long term vision is to take advantage of its compactness, portability and autonomy, in order to enable fabrication in areas of low infrastructure.The CubeFactory2 combines off-the-shelf and custom subsystems, the four mains of which are a 3D-printer, a recycler, an energy supply unit, and a casing. The present hardware meta-paper describes the design rationale of these systems and offers complementary information to the published open source hardware design files. Great care has been paid in the design process to enable replicability by using standard components when possible and releasing all documentation of bespoke elements following open source standards. This article should contribute to make this functional proof of concept ready for replication and for further development towards a market-ready product

Inducing behavioural change in society through communication and education in sustainable manufacturing

The United Nations considers the mobilization of the broad public to be the essential requirement for achieving a shift towards a more sustainable development. Science can play a vital role in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) by contributing to ESD-related research and development on the one hand, and by becoming active awareness raisers themselves in education and multiplier networks. Specifically, the use of special Learnstruments, and investment inOpen Educationformats among other educational tools, may pave the way for accelerated apprehension and appreciation of sustainable manufacturing topics among the greater populace

CubeFactory2 – an Off-Grid and Circular 3D-Printing Mini-Factory

The CubeFactory2 is a self-sufficient and luggage-sized production unit illustrating the concept of sustainable manufacturing through circularity and resource conservation. It is circular in the sense that it can create new products out of waste. It embeds a Fuse Filament Fabrication 3D-printer whose input material is supplied by a recycling unit producing filament out of thermoplastic waste. It saves resources in the sense that it embeds renewable energy and material supply to recycle and 3D-print without the need for further infrastructure. In its current state of development, the purpose of the CubeFactory2 is primarily illustrative and to support awareness on sustainable manufacturing. If offers an experienceable application of the concepts of circularity and resource conservation. The long term vision is to take advantage of its compactness, portability and autonomy, in order to enable fabrication in areas of low infrastructure.The CubeFactory2 combines off-the-shelf and custom subsystems, the four mains of which are a 3D-printer, a recycler, an energy supply unit, and a casing. The present hardware meta-paper describes the design rationale of these systems and offers complementary information to the published open source hardware design files. Great care has been paid in the design process to enable replicability by using standard components when possible and releasing all documentation of bespoke elements following open source standards. This article should contribute to make this functional proof of concept ready for replication and for further development towards a market-ready product

Learnstruments: Learning-conducive artefacts to foster learning productivity in production engineering

Learnstruments are artefacts, which automatically demonstrate their functionality to the learner. They can be used directly at the workplace and aim at increasing the learning and teaching productivity. The huge variety of design paths for Learnstruments requires a systematic approach for their development. A morphology for Learnstruments is introduced. Exemplary learning-conducive applications for manual assembly in international organizations like 3D-PDFs and a Smart-Assembly-Workplace are presented. They help avoiding assembly errors and improve productivity by providing interactive instructions to the learners. By implementing these along the morphology guideline, the consideration of important didactical and technical criteria is ensured