Learning Factories Of The Future

This book presents peer-reviewed papers from 14th International Conference on Learning Factories (CLF 2024) that took place from April 17-19, 2024, at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. CLF 2024 continued the successful CLF conference series targeting the latest research and development in the field of learning factories. The book is organized into two volumes and covers state-of-the-art research insights towards Learning Factories of the Future including learning factory design, Industry 5.0, digital twinning and VR/AR, 5G/6G in learning factories, AI for manufacturing systems, human-centred work design, human-robot collaboration, sustainability in learning factories, as well as cross-learning factory product/production systems. The book seamlessly integrates theory with real-world practice, empowering learners such as students, qualified engineers, and workers to keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies and methodologies, through enhancing learning factories. It also helps society and industry effectively manage future transitions with addressing current topics around digitalization, sustainability, and lifelong learning in industry.

This book presents peer-reviewed papers from 14th International Conference on Learning Factories (CLF 2024) that took place from April 17–19, 2024, at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. CLF 2024 continued the successful CLF conference series targeting the latest research and development in the field of learning factories. The book is organized into two volumes and covers state-of-the-art research insights towards Learning Factories of the Future including learning factory design, Industry 5.0, digital twinning and VR/AR, 5G/6G in learning factories, AI for manufacturing systems, human-centred work design, human-robot collaboration, sustainability in learning factories, as well as cross-learning factory product/production systems. The book seamlessly integrates theory with real-world practice, empowering learners such as students, qualified engineers, and workers to keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies and methodologies, through enhancing learning factories. It also helps society and industry effectively manage future transitions with addressing current topics around digitalization, sustainability, and lifelong learning in industry.

This book presents the state of the art of learning factories. It outlines the motivations, historic background, and the didactic foundations of learning factories. Definitions of the term learning factory and a corresponding morphological model are provided as well as a detailed overview of existing learning factory approaches in industry and academia, showing the broad range of different applications and varying contents. Learning factory best-practice examples are presented in detailed and structured manner. The state of the art of learning factories curricula design and their use to enhance learning and research as well as potentials and limitations are presented. Further research priorities and innovative learning factory concepts to overcome current barriers are offered. While today numerous learning factories have been built in industry (big automotive companies, pharma companies, etc.) and academia in the last decades, a comprehensive handbook for the scientific community and practitioners alike is still missing. The book addresses therefore both researchers in production-related areas, that want to conduct industry-relevant research and education, as well as managers and engineers in industry, who are searching for an effective way to train their employees. In addition to this, the learning factory concept is also regarded as an innovative learning concept in the field of didactics.

FACTORIES OF THE FUTURE The book provides insight into various technologies adopted and to be adopted in the future by industries and measures the impact of these technologies on manufacturing performance and their sustainability. Businesses and manufacturers face a slew of demands beyond the usual issues of staying agile and surviving in a competitive landscape within a rapidly changing world. Factories of the Future deftly takes the reader through the continuous technology changes and looks ten years down the road at what manufacturing will mostly look like. The book is divided into two parts: Emerging technologies and advancements in existing technologies. Emerging technologies consist of Industry 4.0 and 5.0 themes, machine learning, intelligent machining, advanced maintenance, reliability, and green manufacturing. The advances of existing technologies consist of digital manufacturing, artificial intelligence in machine learning, Internet of Things, product life cycle, and the impact of factories on the future of manufacturing performance of the manufacturing industries. Readers will find in this illuminating book: A comprehensive discussion of almost all emerging technologies, including “green” manufacturing; An overview of the social, economic, and technical aspects of these technologies; An explanation of these technological advancements on manufacturing performance, through case studies and other analytical tools.

Overviews manufacturing systems from the ground up, following the same concept as in the first edition. Delves into the fundamental building blocks of manufacturing systems: manufacturing processes and equipment. Discusses all topics from the viewpoint of four fundamental manufacturing attributes: cost, rate, flexibility and quality.

Over half of England’s secondary schools are now academies. While their impact on achievement has been debated, the social and cultural outcomes prompted by this neoliberal educational model has received less scrutiny. This book draws on original research based at Dreamfields Academy, a celebrated flagship secondary school in a large English city, to show how the accelerated marketization and centralization of education is reproducing raced, classed and gendered inequalities. The book also examines the complex stories underlying Dreamfields’ glossy veneer of success and shows how students, teachers and parents navigate the everyday demands of Dreamfields’ results-driven conveyor belt. Hopes and dreams are effectively harnessed and mobilized to enact insidious forms of social control, as education develops new sites and discourses of surveillance.

The clearly declining competitiveness of the United States in the world marketplace has prompted increased concern about the health of the United States' manufacturing industries. This volume is the result of lively discussions and formal presentations by industry leaders and education experts during a symposium convened by the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council. Issues involving the changing face of U.S. manufacturing, requirements for educating and training engineers for manufacturing careers, and the possibilities for cooperative arrangements between industry and academia are examined in-depth in an effort to improve manufacturing education and therefore move toward boosting the nation's world competitiveness in manufacturing.

Mainstream economists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs claim that unfettered capitalism and digital technology can unlock a future of unbounded prosperity, create endless high paying jobs, and solve the world’s vast social and ecological problems. Realizing this future of abundance purportedly rests in the transformation of human potential into innovative human capital through new 21st century forms of education. In this new book Alex Means challenges this view. Stagnating economic growth and runaway inequality have emerged as the ‘normal’ condition of advanced capitalism. Simultaneously, there has been a worldwide educational expansion and a growing surplus of college-educated workers relative to their demand in the world economy. This surplus is complicated by an emerging digital revolution driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning that generates worker displacing innovations and immaterial forms of labor and valorization. Learning to Save the Future argues that rather than fostering mass intellectuality, educational development is being constrained by a value structure subordinated to 21st century capitalism and technology. Human capabilities from creativity, design, engineering, to communication are conceived narrowly as human capital, valued in terms of economic productivity and growth. Similarly, global problems such as the erosion of employment and climate change are conceived as educational problems to be addressed through business solutions and the digitalization of education. This thought-provoking account provides a cognitive map of this condition, offering alternatives through critical analyses of education and political economy, technology and labor, creativity and value, power and ecology.