On the development of the Digital Shadow of the Fischertechnik Training Factory Industry 4.0: an educational perspective

The fourth industrial revolution is characterized by the increasing availability of data, which can be collected from machines to create digital counterparts of them (e.g., Digital Shadow, Digital Twin), understand their status, and drive strategic and operational decisions. To effectively create and use such digital counterparts, it is necessary to hire skilled people or train them to achieve the necessary competencies, for instance using learning factories, which are nowadays becoming more and more common. From an educational standpoint, it is interesting to observe how such competencies could be developed starting from a personal background. The paper describes the development process of the Digital Shadow of the Fischertechnik Training Factory Industry 4.0 in the context of a university course. The aim was to understand if the competencies acquired during the Computer Science bachelor's degree were enough to allow for the development of a functioning Digital Shadow of the learning factory.