Towards 5.0 skills acquisition for students in industrial engineering: the role of learning factories

In recent years, there has been an increasing transition towards the Industry 5.0 paradigm, which focuses on technology and sustainability but also on the resilience and human-centricity of the production and logistics processes. These changes require investment in equipment, process change, and new skills. To avoid the mismatch between the skills required by industry and the skills offered by university courses, recently, learning factories (LFs) have been spread worldwide, aiming at promoting hand-on learning approaches to manufacturing, logistics and technological processes. This paper illustrates how LFs can support the development of contents and competencies useful in the transition to Industry 5.0 in the industrial engineering courses. Starting from the description of a LF installed in Italy, this study presents a systematisation of the contents that can be addressed by adopting LF in the design of learning modules specifically facing the requirements and skills of the different Industry 5.0 areas.