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In this project, the following products were produced as a result of this project: Smart Manufacturing training workshops Online Educational modules on Smart Manufacturing Industrial speaker short talks that present the State-of-the-art Industrial Applications Peer-reviewed articles were produced. High school and Middle School visits In the hands-on training, we demonstrated the use of code-programmed drones in technical education and Smart Manufacturing (SM). Unmanned aerial and ground vehicle technologies are increasingly finding applications in industrial settings. Training on SM is achieved by using coded drones, with educational modules and a database of technologies and their applications.
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Transforming Industry towards Smart Manufacturing in the United States
The necessity for educational programs in advanced manufacturing became prominent during the economic crisis in 2007 when the demand of industrial plants was for already trained highly-skilled laborers. To respond to this demand, many advanced manufacturing educational pro-grams, such as mechatronics, were developed in community and technical colleges. Since it was officially defined in the United States Congress in 2015, Smart Manufacturing (SM) has increasingly been under the spotlight. However, current efforts in deploying SM technologies in the US do not provide a workforce trained to utilize and perform SM technologies and techniques. Graduates of mechatronics and other advanced manufacturing programs remain mostly unaware of the technologies of Smart Manufacturing, such as Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber Physical Systems (CPS), Industry 4.0 standards, and the capacity and range of applications of additive manufacturing and high-precision subtractive manufacturing technologies from tooling to end-user products. The programs currently available do not provide workforce training on SM technologies that target community and technical colleges, which supply a significant percentage of the industrial workforce. In the project Smart Manufacturing for America’s Revolutionizing Technological Transformation (SMART2), this gap in workforce training is met by providing the needed training to career technical education (CTE) and STEM educators in mechatronics and engineering technology. This project is a collaborative effort among three institutions and provides professional training for faculty of advanced manufacturing education programs and an online knowledge-base platform for educators and manufacturers, as well as on-ground training work-shops and educational modules.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1801120
- PAR ID:
- 10091558
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- National NSF-ATE Conference
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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