A Learning Factory for Teaching the Transition from Conventional to Industry 4.0 Based Systems

Industries face major challenges in designing manufacturing systems that are able to respond to changing customer requirements quickly, while keeping product quality and process technologies up to date. Higher education in the field of Engineering must recognize the needs of industries to face the current challenges, enabling graduates to assist companies in establishing manufacturing systems based on industry 4.0 technologies. This paper presents an approach proposal for teaching the transition from conventional to industry 4.0 based systems, which will be applied to the Engineering graduation courses at the Federal University of Itajuba. The approach is based on the learning system MPS®200 of Festo Didactic acquired by the university to compose the Production Systems Lab. The problem-based learning (PBL) methodology will be used to prepare students for real world problems.