Learning factories for future oriented research and education in manufacturing

As the pillar industry of China’s national economy, the electronic information industry plays an important role in social development and has increasingly become an important indicator of international competitiveness in the informatization age. We constructed a fusion evaluation model of the electronic information industry and financial industry in China, and used coupling theory to measure the integration degree of the two industries. Next, we empirically measure the impact of the industrial integration level on the competitiveness of the electronic information industry. According to the empirical test, we found that (1) the coupling degree ranged from 0.9 to 1 with minimal changes and that a strong coupling relationship existed between the electronic information industry and financial industry; (2) the coupling coordination degree ranged between 0.59 and 0.80, with a coordination level ranging from primary to intermediate coordination; and (3) the degree of industrial integration had a lagging positive impact on industrial competitiveness. Based on these results, we proposed policy recommendations to strengthen industrial integration and promote the international competitiveness of China’s electronic information industry for various aspects such as government services, technology upgrades, industry integration, and effective capital entry.

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/9/2695/pdf

Does Industry Integration Improve the Competitiveness of China’s Electronic Information Industry?—Evidence from the Integration of the Electronic Information Industry and Financial Industry

Starting up a Learning Factory focused on Industry 4.0

In this paper, we present and propose the interactive push-pull lean game with a specific approach for training/testing of production processes. With our approach of combining the psychologically effective physical lean game and the simulation lean game for deeper analyses of the production process, we can successfully overcome the communication and motivation problems of production and management workers when new production strategies are being introduced into the company to raise the competitiveness. The game only takes two hours and it has been proven to be effective with leadership teams and shop floor workers alike in more than 50 real-case production environments. The game is played in two parts where each part is in sharp contrast to the other with respect to results. Once the participants of the game see the effects of both production strategies, they become extremely engaged and motivated, and it becomes much easier to manage organizational improvements. In the third chapter of the paper, we present the Virtual factory computer models of the game dynamic, showing the same results as obtained with groups. The two simulation models serve to test and verify the interactive game. The paper ends with the discussion and conclusions. (Received in December 2013, accepted in May 2014. This paper was with the authors 2 months for 1 revision.)

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Motivational Lean Game to Support Decision between Push and Pull Production Strategy

This paper aims at conducting an analysis the competences of production engineering graduates, building on an industry view. To this end, we conducted a survey addressing 103 medium and large companies within the Brazilian manufacturing industry. The results suggest that companies do recognize the importance of competences. Some gaps in the competences of graduates were also pointed out by respondents. This study suggests the need for the development of efforts for providing the production engineer with a better professional background. The links between university and industry are likely to contribute towards such direction, notably as a starting point for institutions and industries to foster their student’s competences, aiming their aptitude for an ever-competitive job market, which values the flexible, creative being, who is capable of creating innovative solutions.

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Analyzing the competences of production engineering graduates: an industry perspective

In the current production scenario, with a globalized economic environment, companies increasingly need to become morecompetitive to face up to the global market. This means production systems are constantly changing in the direction of thereplacement of the low productivity equipment, rearranging the plant layout, the redirection of the transport stream from thesupplier to the end customer and adding new models to plan and control production. All these changes aim to improve productquality and to reduce production lead time by eliminating waste, reducing costs and increasing competitive advantage through theprocess flexibility. For these changes to happen effectively is necessary that the current employees and the future productionengineers are inserted and fit in this new reality. Currently, the Lean Manufacturing concepts are applied in an industrialenvironment to optimize production flow eliminating the waste found in the process. However, there is a challenge to put these concepts effectively in the industrial environment and in the university environment. The traditional learning process based onteacher, classroom, non-integrated theoretical and practical concepts, case studies with static production characteristic (controlledvariable) has been shown to be ineffective in the consolidation of these concepts in a dynamic production environment. Inuniversity, this same model applied in the production engineering course and fragmented into different disciplines makes productionengineers not fully prepared for the challenges of the new industrial environment, requiring an adjustment period. This adaptationwill result in low competitiveness of the company in front of global competitors. Thus, this article aims to present a laboratorymodel for integrated learning of the Lean Manufacturing concepts based in practices able to reproduce the dynamic productionenvironment, thus speeding the process of training employees of the industrial environment and the learning of future productionengineers.

A. S. Rossa Neto

Papers

Integration university–industry: laboratory model for learning lean manufacturing concepts in the academic and industrial environments