LCAMP project moves towards the first Advanced Manufacturing Platform in the second partners meeting in Toulouse

The Learner Centric Advanced Manufacturing Platform for Centre of Vocational Excellence (CovEs) meeting took place on 17-18 January in Toulouse (France), hosted by Mécanic Vallé in cooperation with Campus des métiers et des qualifications d’excellence at the Maison de la Formation Jacqueline Auriol, a regional Training / Research / Innovation and Technology Transfer centre dedicated to aeronautics and aerospace. 

LCAMP partners met for the second time since the EU-funded project kicked off in 2022. The LCAMP project aims to support and empower regional Advanced Manufacturing for the Centre of Vocational Excellence to become more resilient, innovative and better equipped to train, upskill, and reskill young and adult students to successfully face the digital and green transitions. Furthermore, LCAMP supports regions to grow and be more competitive through their VET systems.

In Toulouse, LCAMP partners were welcomed by the French Director of the Academic Region for Initial and Continuing Vocational Training and Apprenticeship, Mr Nicolas Madiot, who stated that regional authorities would like LCAMP to become the European reference for VET and training centres in its ambitions and network of organisations. He encouraged LCAMP partners to keep working together on the development of the first Learner Centric Advanced Manufacturing Platform for the Centre of Vocational Excellence, as, he said “alone we go faster, but together we go farther.”

Parallel workshops: a collaborative process

Following the inspiring words of Mr Madiot, the partners started their collaborative sessions. During  the two days, parallel workshops were organised to advance LCAMP activities to build the future platform.

On 17 January 2023, workshops were focused on the future Learner Centric Advanced Manufacturing Observatory (WP3, led by Mecanic Vallé), on the Open Innovation Community (WP4, led by TKNIKA) VET-SMEs Connection (WP7, led by AFM and co-lead AFIL – Associazione Fabbrica Intelligente Lombardia) and finally, on the content of the Learner Centric Training for AM (WP5, led by DHBW).

The Learner Centric Advanced Manufacturing Observatory aims to build on the best practices from existing Advanced Manufacturing platforms and observatories. The observatory will then filter and analyse relevant information, providing a high-value report to Vocational Education and Training stakeholders. Students from the Telco-Mines Schools Albi-Carmaux (France) presented their insights about how the future Observatory could look and match students’ expectations.

The Open Innovation Community (OIC) aims to promote applied research and development projects, mainly between CoVEs and SMEs. The first stage of creating the OIC is desk and field research that points to the importance of VET for technical innovation. Moreover, part of the work of the OIC will be considering how the Community could promote innovations in Advanced Manufacturing SMEs through the ADMA  model.

The Community will pave the way to improve the SMEs-VET Connection, which through LCAMP will be accelerated the delivery of advanced manufacturing for SMEs by linking digital transformation journeys with training delivery from VET Centres.

The first day was closed with brainstorming on how to define the qualifications, respective skills, and competencies needed for the digital transformation towards Industry 4.0 and 5.0. This Learner Centric Training will create a service on qualifications/training offers and Micro-credentials for Advanced Manufacturing, which will be added to the future LCAMP platform.

On 18 January 2023, partners turned the future Collaborative Learning Factory (WP6, led by VET Centre Miguel Altuna) and the “Platform” (WP8 led by KIC).

Partners contributed to the first steps to set up factory labs for advanced manufacturing training, through internationally connected Learning factories. They will build and connect real and virtual scenarios where they integrate Industry 4.0 and 5.0 enable technologies for training purposes.

The LCAMP final product will be the “Platform” which is devoted to providing a one-stop-shop service for accessing all services, data and information generated by the project. Both the OIC and Observatory will be integrated into the platform. During the workshop, partners started to jointly establish the data information (job descriptions, skills, competencies or courses) that will be present within the platform, to help to define the final user experience.

Aerospace Valley cluster

 In order to expand LCAMP collaboration to other sectors and EU Projects, partners had the opportunity to learn more about the work of the Aerospace Valley cluster. Maude Perier-Camby, European Project Manager, explained that their goals are to lead the network and support the members in innovation and in particular to guide partners in their digital transition, environmental transition and international development and competencies and skills. Both actions are related to LCAMP’s goals to support and empower regional Advanced Manufacturing VET-SME ecosystems to become better equipped to train and upskill students to face the twin transition.

Next face-to-face meeting

The next project meeting will be hosted by the Kocaeli Provincial Directorate of National Education (Kocaeli, Turkey)  in June 2023.

Stay tuned

EARLALL, as the Dissemination and Communication Partner, invited all the partners and interested parties to follow LCAMP activities via its social media channels (Twitter and LinkedIn), website or by subscribing to the recently launched newsletter. In a near future, a leaflet and a promotional video will be available. Visit the media section!