Future

University 4.0

The new partnership with the Polytechnic University of Turin for a special Master’s degree, called Manufacturing 4.0, on the industrial production systems of the future.

Feb 2018

Project Manager, Technical Leader, Systems Technologist and Technical Coordinator in Industry 4.0: the careers of the near future, in which companies need people who must be trained with advanced skills that can work in an increasingly international milieu, to deal with the introduction of enabling technologies in new manufacturing processes, integrating technical and managerial skills that are crucial for the manufacturing of the future. The new Master’s degree in higher apprenticeships at the Polytechnic University of Turin in Manufacturing 4.0 was designed to meet this need in the manufacturing world in close cooperation with companies such as: Avio Aero, Comau, Inpeco, Magneti Marelli, Prima Industrie, SKF and Petronas, who are partners in this innovative training path.

The goal of this Master’s degree, taught entirely in English, is to train young and motivated fresh Engineering graduates, in order to prepare a new generation of high-level specialistsin the field of the industrial production systems of the future.

Manufacturing 4.0, a production method now known as the fourth industrial revolution, is a change geared towards increasingly automated and interconnected production through the development of new digital technologies. Technologies that strongly impact four elements of manufacturing activity development: the use of data to centralise and store information, computing power and connectivity, big data and open data, the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine and cloud computing; the use of analytics to transform collected data into values, considering how today only 1% of this is used by companies, who could instead gain advantages from “machine learning”, i.e. from machines that improve their performance by “learning” from data as it’s collected and analysed; the development of man-machine interaction, involving increasingly widespread touchscreen interfaces, and augmented reality; finally, the transition from the digital to the “real”, which includes additive manufacturing, collaborative robotics, communication, machine-to-machine interactions, and the new technologies to store and use energy in a targeted manner, streamlining costs and optimising performance.

The Polytechnic University of Turin will present for the Master’s degree a request for financing on the Piedmont Region call for applications, “Advanced Education and Research Apprenticeship 2016-2018”, which provides for the experimentation with new forms of job placement, with participants recruited with Advanced Education Apprenticeship contracts by the sponsoring companies, already widely involved in Industry 4.0 at the national level.

“The Master’s degree in Higher Apprenticeship in Manufacturing 4.0 is the natural evolution of the Master’s in Industrial Automation carried out in partnership with Comau and Prima Industrie, and has seen the introduction into the course programmes of enabling technologies at the Industry 4.0 level. From the very start, the idea of its launch was met with enthusiasm by the partnership of companies who support the initiative, thanks to the opportunity to train a new generation of specialists that can dominate the manufacturing technologies of the future”, commented Luca Iuliano, science advisor for the Master’s course.

 “In the context of the digital path undertaken by Avio Aero”, explains Francesco Del Greco, CIO at Avio Aero, “training plays a key role, especially when used to broaden the range of skills. Additive manufacturing, for instance, is a technology that the company began investing in over 10 ago now, and which today sees us manufacturing with a freedom of design that was previously unimaginable. We will be able to fully grasp the new possibilities offered by digitization only if we can overcome the boundaries of traditional design, opening up to a new way of harmonizing and exploiting production data, as well as the possibility of sharing knowledge in an increasingly open and collaborative way. The Master’s degree in Manufacturing 4.0 at the Polytechnic, which integrates technical and managerial skills, perfectly meets this need”.

Edited by PoliFlash Magazine