TechFact - Design and adoption of Teaching Factories, Learning Spaces and Learning Activities for fostering the education of a responsible generation of engineers and technical students

The last decades have clearly shown the relevance of manufacturing in our Society, at the global and national levels. Manufacturing generates value for global trade, accounts for most of the jobs, and contributes to global economic value. Italy is among the top players in manufacturing, and manufacturing is the main sector contributing to the national economy. Unfortunately, manufacturing - when not properly managed and developed – has also some deep impacts on our Society: global warming, pollution, and resource depletion to name a few. This is no more acceptable. For the next generations, a new sustainable model is needed, and new Sustainable and Circular Manufacturing is needed too. Europe – rooted in manufacturing since the first industrial revolution – is leading this discussion globally, with its Sustainable Development Strategy. Sustainable Manufacturing calls for many transformations, from customers’ habits to production facilities, from open chains to closed and circular processes. Among these transformations, technological evolution is acting – as usual – in a push way. Technological progress could provide suitable solutions for greener, more reliable, resilient, and sustainable manufacturing under the umbrella of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). Such industrial evolution is becoming a key concern for many organizations due to the challenges brought forward. Higher Educational Institutions are expected to arm graduates with the knowledge and competencies required to support organizations to remain competitive in an Industry 4.0 context, but the rapid advances in technology raise doubts about whether this can be achieved with standard educational models. Meeting this and future challenges requires transformational changes in the way engineering students are educated, reshaping the understanding of what are the contents (knowledge, skills, and competencies) engineers should possess, how Learning Activities (LA) should be developed to allow competencies learning and assessment, how it should be taught, and how Learning Spaces (LS) should be designed. The TechFact project aims to support the education of engineering and technical students, giving them the needed skills and tools to afford such challenging times. The project wants to define guidelines for designing new LS and LA to be used in the modern manufacturing education field, for supporting an effective and adequate learning experience. The project is based on a list of empirical research activities, to be run in the Teaching Factories available among the project partners and in their international networks. The research outcomes are meant to inform the design of LS and LA that consider the crucial matter of sustainability, circularity, and digitalization and to contribute to the current developments toward a new paradigm in industrial engineering education. The results will have several implications for future research involving LS and LA in manufacturing education.