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Skilled Hands for Hi-tech Production
Start date: Sep 1, 2015, End date: Aug 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The composite industry is characterised by high added value and complexity of manual work processes. The future of the composite market is expected to be highly competitive, and companies with innovative capabilities and skilled labour force can thrive and gain market share. However, the growth of the composite industry has been to some extent limited due to the unavailability of skilled labour force, resulting from its specific complexity, requiring working habits, experiences and manual skills. All these tacit assets can be offered by the surplus and currently unemployed labour force from the traditional industrial sectors, such as wooden or textile industry. The key identified problem is that the VET systems do not offer structured quality training programmes in the field of composite manufacturing that would reduce the existing skills mismatches. Therefore the key mission of the Compo-HUB project is to use the current potentials offered by the labour market as a baseline and furthermore involve additional education and training activities to re-qualify the labour force to be able to work effectively in the respective high-tech area. The project will develop and manage the Composite HUB which will present a durable and result-driven strategic partnership, involving 3 main groups of stakeholders: 1) organizations that carry out research and development on composites and/or manufacture composite materials, 2) organizations that use the composite materials to manufacture composite parts for different industries (e.g. aerospace, automotive, marine etc.) and 3) training organizations and VET providers. By devising and implementing an aggressive valorisation strategy, the HUB will aim to influence the VET policies and regional economic development strategies, focusing especially on the Zasavje and Kuressaare region. The main innovative result of the project is a holistic training programme to educate, train and – consequently – properly qualify the workers in the field of composite manufacturing, which will be responsive to the identified market needs and tailored to the specific requirements of the target training group (i.e. wood cabinet makers/joiners). The training courses will be integrated and available through the developed on-line open-source learning platform, allowing wide exploitation and simple customization according to the different market needs. In addition, the project will train the educators and trainers from companies and VET institutions and will organize a teaching/learning mobility with a particular focus on work-based teaching. The overall approach of the project will be based on the Waterfall model due to the linear-sequential nature of the project. The approach will allow effective management and delivery, especially due to the size and length of the project, where requirements and goals are clear and well understood and the end-product definition is stable. The approach will be user-centric from the inception to the termination of the project. The activities of the work plan can be aggregated into 4 different logical blocks. The foundational work of the first block results from the requirements analysis (user and context requirements) and conceptual framework. The analysis of the collated data builds the necessary models and processes that will drive the development, implementation and evaluation activities. The second block covers the main work package involving the development of the training programme and on-line learning platform. The third block represents the actual delivery and evaluation of developed training programme (delivery of 240 training hours, involving target group of cca. 30 people). The fourth block covers project management and dissemination/exploitation. In terms of desired impact and long term benefits, the project will fight rising levels of unemployment in wood occupations by promoting active participation of disadvantaged groups and will provide them with the new knowledge and skills in the field of composite manufacturing, which are required by the labour market. The developed occupation standard and catalogue of the “composite laminator” will assure that skills can be more easily recognized, within and across national borders, as well as in the labour market. The developed training programme can be furthermore used and delivered by other VET providers, which will eventually unburden the companies to educate, (re)train and (re)qualify the workers to fit their demands. This will improve the capacities of VET system, composite sector and, on the long run, economic growth in general at the European level. The European Composites Industry Association (EuCIA) will be used as a impact multiplier to promote and reinforce cooperation with other European partners and to establish the exchange of knowledge and good practices, eventually contributing to the development of innovative practices in the field of education for composite manufacturing.
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