IN4WOOD: DEVELOPING AN ONLINE AND FREE TRAINING COURSE TO ADAPT THE CURRICULA OF WORKERS AND MANAGERS OF WOOD AND FURNITURE SECTOR TO THE SKILLS REQUIRED BY INDUSTRY 4.0

The European Union (EU) is moving towards a new industrial revolution, considered as the fourth, socalled Industry 4.0 (I4.0). In short, I4.0 is characterized by the use of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) to transform the way in which companies and manufacturers work; to transform the traditional factory into a smart factory by using Key Enabling Technologies (KET): sensors, wireless communications, last generation networks, intelligent robots and machines, cloud computing and big data analytics, among others. The new digital industry will promise to increase the flexibility in manufacturing, mass customization, better quality and improved productivity. EU is promoting the industrial change through new industrial policies and funding in research and infrastructures. But the change also includes challenges like training workers, update competences in managers, and adjust the curricula of Vocational Education and Training (VET) and Higher Education (HE), to acquire the skills required by I4.0. In this regard, the European Project IN4WOOD, funded by EU Erasmus+ Program, aims specifically to bring this 4th revolution to the specific sector of wood and furniture industry, developing a training course for supporting manufacturers and workers in this sector in Europe to understand, deploy and use the KET of I4.0 in their own businesses, as well as to improve the competitiveness of their enterprises. But the goal is also to train VET and HE level students as the future technicians and workers of I4.0. In this paper, we present the work is being carried out in IN4WOOD Project. The main goal is to design, develop and recognize a Joint Curricula for filling the skills gaps in I4.0 related to the technologies and topics for production and management of the wood and furniture industry. To do this, we are working on the development of an online and free training course in multiple languages through an online software platform which contains all the materials. These are being designed by using, not only the typical slides and text documents, but also the latest and most revolutionary educational methodologies, such as gamification, video pills and flipped classroom. The training course will be tested by a pilot, carried out in four European countries. The results extracted from the pilot will help us to improve the software platform and materials in order to launch a stable free and online training course.