The European project “Digital Skills for Factories of the Future,” launched in January 2019, relies on a network of European partners to train industrialists and support them in their digital transition. The Fayol Institute, project leader for our School, provides its expertise for the transfer of skills towards new integrated offerings for the Industry of the Future.
DiGiFoF, an ambitious European ERASMUS+/ Knowledge Alliance project, received one million euros in funding over three years for the entire consortium (including €119k for Mines Saint-Étienne). It is coordinated by the University of Sibiu in Romania and will enable the development of joint actions and the networking of training and research organizations with industrial organizations.
Xavier Boucher, project leader at the Fayol Institute, details its main orientations for us.
What are the objectives of the DiGiFoF project?
The DiGiFoF project aims to create a collaboration platform between academics and industrialists, designed to boost expertise transfer capabilities in the field of the industry of the future.
The goal is to support companies’ digital transition through a set of means focused on professional training, to develop new skill profiles necessary for industrial changes, and to foster knowledge transfer between academics and industrialists.
This European platform includes both the creation of a network of stakeholders fully invested in these transfers and the deployment of operational experimentation and training environments for the industry of the future.
Four essential dimensions underpin our approach:
- Positioning companies towards the Industry of the Future: the ability to conduct relevant strategic thinking to initiate this digital and industrial transition.
- Change management: the ability to deploy diagnostic and transformation approaches for organizations, skills, and processes.
- Training at several levels: initial training to be adapted to the needs of this industrial transition, and professional training for employees already in post.
- Innovation in Business Models, with the specific development of new integrated Product/Service offerings.
How does such a project begin?
The first step involves an in-depth analysis of industrialists’ needs in digital skills; a questionnaire has been launched internationally. This phase will allow us to configure both the collaboration offering with industrialists and the professional training content: we will propose various educational and collaborative resources to meet these needs:
- Webinar (short session for industrialists).
- Educational modules for initial training and for continuing education.
- Industrial diagnostic and partnership support approach.
- European standardized Master’s Programme.
- Creation of an international community of practice via a web platform for sustainable accessibility of training activities.
What is the expertise of the Mines Saint-Étienne teams?
There is a strong core of expertise within the Fayol Institute, which has been conducting work, studies, and research projects (FUI, ANR, European project) for over 10 years on the transformation of product-oriented manufacturing industry towards an integrated product-service offering through digitalization (product design / lifecycle / business model transformation). The team brings together varied and complementary skills to address different industrial aspects: production system management and optimization, change management and internal skills, economic models and business models, design of integrated product-service offerings.
The DiGiFoF project is also fully integrated into IMT’s approach on the “Production Systems” theme, which is currently being deployed with several national and international projects on the industry of the future.
Training sessions will take place both in the It’m Factory technology platform and within companies themselves: the main goal is to “reposition humans at the heart of the Factory of the Future” thanks to co-constructed expertise and approaches such as “design thinking”.
This project relies on a network of skills and 15 European partners: including 5 academic institutions and several companies, such as Clextral (international leader in extrusion technologies – Auvergne Rhône-Alpes Region), several European industrial clusters, competitiveness clusters such as Viameca, as well as innovation support associations such as CIRIDD in France (for its expertise in functionality economy and sustainable digitalization).
Collaborators involved in this project and expertise mobilized at the Fayol Institute:
- Nadine Dubruc: Change management and skills transformation.
- Elaheh Maleki: Industrial Engineering / Servitization.
- Khaled Medini: Production Systems.
- Sophie Peillon: Economic Models and Business Models.
- Hervé Vaillant: Product and service integration.
- Xavier Boucher: Design and optimization of industrial systems. Integrated product-service offerings.
Learn more at www.digifof.eu
Contact: Xavier Boucher, project leader
