Mon, 19 December, 2022
The Joining 4.0 Innovation Centre (J4IC) and the Anglia Ruskin Innovation Centre (ARIC) both strategic partnerships between TWI and, respectively, Lancaster University and Anglia Ruskin University, and their fellow consortium members Malardalen University and the University of Milan, were delighted to secure funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme earlier in this year, for the Up-Skill project: Up-skilling for Industry 5.0 Roll-out.
Work has now started on Up-Skill which will focus on building a better understanding of how businesses, particularly in industrial and manufacturing environments, can lever value from human and machine integration. The project will look at what happens when new, ‘intelligent’ production technologies are introduced into organisations, particularly examining how artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and other technologies can change working practices, the skills people use, and how personnel respond to and interpret the practices. The research will also map wider changes that may occur, using ethnographic studies to consider working methodologies and social interactions, and routes to understanding and obtaining the technologies to be implemented.
The consortium has invited several manufacturing organisations from across Europe, all of whom are using intelligent technologies of various kinds and for different purposes, to take part in Up-skill. Investigating and comparing the effects of these new technologies on work, skills and organisations will enable the development of best use cases to support workers and managers, and likely future skills. Ethnography will map the strategies and management approaches in order for other companies to follow similar processes.
The Up-Skill partners will work with the organisations on case studies designed to gain insights into: the skills, knowledge and practices adopted and developed by workers as they adapt to technology changes; the history of how existing skills, knowledge and practices developed; organisational adaption; emerging management practices implicated in managing machine-human value augmentation; the implications for, and consequences of, adopting the strategies; the implications for training existing and future workers and managers; and assessment of the technologies instigated by the project.
The project, which has a 3-year duration, is expected to have a wide-reaching impact that directly affects the evolution of Industry 5.0 and its implications for future work, and in turn European, and worldwide, industries and policy.
Find out more about Up-Skill on the project website. In you are interested in how Up-Skill can bring benefit to your work or research, please do not hesitate to get in touch – simply email to info@twi-innovation-management.com.
This work was funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee 101070666