Making our Workforce Fit for the Factory of the Future

Increased introduction of digital technologies into manufacturing is leading to increased automation. Estimates indicate that the potential for automation in predictable physical work is at 33% followed by 22% in data collection and 11% in data processing. The increased globalisation in manufacturing also introduces requirements in terms of team work, intercultural and language capabilities, the need to deal with shorter production cycles, and changes in demographics requiring workers to stay active for longer. Europe faces considerable challenges in addressing future skills needs. From the perspective of the workforce the issues are increasingly complex where current training and educational solutions are discrete and lack interconnections and are largely dissociated from work activities. Growing gaps in knowledge and know-how make it increasingly challenging to adapt, work proactively and contribute to innovations. FIT4FoF aims at addressing a range of these issues by analysing current skills initiatives, better to understand how to address workers' needs, analysing technology trends across 6 industrial areas of robotics, additive manufacturing, mechatronics/machine automation, data analytics, cybersecurity and human machine interaction, to define new job profiles, which will inform education and training requirements. FIT4FoF will develop a new education and training framework, which places workers (women and men) at the centre of a co-design and development process that recognises and addresses their skills needs. By applying educational approaches based on Communities of Practice, FIT4FoF will empower workers to be drivers of the design, development and delivery of their own upskilling programmes. FIT4FoF will develop Alliances of Communities of Practice to broaden the approach across Europe, creating replication strategies enabling educational/training design and development practices to be transferred between regional communities across Europe.