Approach for Implementing New Topics in Learning Factories – Application of Product-specific Carbon Footprint Analysis

Abstract

Due to the constant changes in the production environment and the increasing relevance of sustainability and digitalisation in the industrial sector, there is a corresponding need for constant development of learning factories and the offered range of courses. To achieve this, not only learning content but also the technical infrastructure for knowledge transfer must be expanded in learning factories. Approaches that exist so far focus on the development of new learning factories to implement new or existing topics, although the already existing learning factories could be expanded and changed to these varied needs. Since a systematic approach is lacking so far, the competency-based design for the development of learning factories was used as a basis, developed further with focus on the technical infrastructure expansion. Subsequently, this approach is applied to the ETA Learning Factory at Technical University of Darmstadt. The ETA use case focuses on the topic of product-specific carbon footprint calculation. Therefore, technical infrastructure such as traceability systems, dashboards for visualisation or newly implemented efficiency measures on machine tools is added. The approach can be applied to a variety of topics.