The objective of this paper is to outline the details of a recently-funded National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) project that aims to educate and enable the current and future manufacturing workforce to operate in an Industry 4.0 environment. Additionally, the startup procedures involved, the major ongoing activities during year-one, and preliminary impressions and lessons learned will be elaborated as well.
Industry 4.0 refers to the ongoing reformation of advanced manufacturing (Operation Technologies - OT) enabled by advances in automation/data (Information Technologies - IT). Cyber-enabled smart manufacturing is a multidisciplinary approach that integrates the manufacturing process, its monitoring/control, data science, cyber-physical systems, and cloud computing to drive manufacturing operations. This is further propelled by the dissolution of boundaries separating IT and OT, presenting optimization opportunities not just at a machine-level, but at the plant/enterprise-levels. This so-called fourth industrial revolution is rapidly percolating the discrete and continuous manufacturing industry. It is therefore critical for the current and future US workforce to be cognizant and capable of such interdisciplinary domain knowledge and skills. To meet this workforce need, this project will develop curricula, personnel and communities in cyber-enabled smart manufacturing. The key project components will include: (i) Curriculum Road-Mapping and Implementation – one that integrates IT and OT to broaden the educational experience and employability via road-mapping workshops, and then to develop/implement curricula, (ii) Interdisciplinary Learning Experiences – through collaborative special-projects courses, industry internships and research experiences, (iii) Pathways to Industry 4.0 Careers – to streamline career pathways to enter Industry 4.0 careers, and to pursue further education, and (iv) Faculty Development – continuous improvement via professional development workshops and faculty development leaves. It is expected that this project will help define and chart-out the capabilities demanded from the next-generation workforce to fulfill the call of Industry 4.0, and the curricular ingredients necessary to train and empower them. This will help create an empowered workforce well-suited for Industry 4.0 careers in cyber-enabled smart manufacturing. The collaborative research team’s experience so far in starting up and establishing the project has further shed light on some of the essentials and practicalities needed for achieving the grand vision of enabling the manufacturing workforce for the future. Altogether, the experience and lessons learned during the year-one implementation has provided a better perception of what is needed for imparting a broader impact through this project.
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Create and Host Cyber Competition Using the Preliminary Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE)
As the world becomes more interconnected and our lives increasingly depend on the cyber world, the increasing threat of cyberattacks and cybercrimes make it critical for us to provide better and practical training of the cybersecurity workforce. In recent years, cybersecurity competition has become one of the most effective and attractive way for educating and training college students or professionals. In this paper, we first systematically introduce in details the step-by-step procedure and technical knowledge on how we take use of the ongoing DoD cyber-range environment called Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE) to set up cyber competition virtualization environment, configure and install operating systems and popular services with various well-representative vulnerabilities, and set up the participant’s access and scoring system. Then we introduce the cybersecurity competition successfully organized by us in I/ITSEC 2019 conference, and the experience and lessons learned from this real-world competition event. The technical details and knowledge presented in this paper could help other researchers and educators to set up their own cyber competition environment or event to better train the future cybersecurity workforce.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1915780
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10291781
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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The objective of this paper is to outline the details of a recently-funded National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) project that aims to educate and enable the current and future manufacturing workforce to operate in an Industry 4.0 environment. Additionally, the startup procedures involved, the major ongoing activities during year-one, and preliminary impressions and lessons learned will be elaborated as well. Industry 4.0 refers to the ongoing reformation of advanced manufacturing (Operation Technologies - OT) enabled by advances in automation/data (Information Technologies - IT). Cyber-enabled smart manufacturing is a multidisciplinary approach that integrates the manufacturing process, its monitoring/control, data science, cyber-physical systems, and cloud computing to drive manufacturing operations. This is further propelled by the dissolution of boundaries separating IT and OT, presenting optimization opportunities not just at a machine-level, but at the plant/enterprise-levels. This so-called fourth industrial revolution is rapidly percolating the discrete and continuous manufacturing industry. It is therefore critical for the current and future US workforce to be cognizant and capable of such interdisciplinary domain knowledge and skills. To meet this workforce need, this project will develop curricula, personnel and communities in cyber-enabled smart manufacturing. The key project components will include: (i) Curriculum Road-Mapping and Implementation – one that integrates IT and OT to broaden the educational experience and employability via road-mapping workshops, and then to develop/implement curricula, (ii) Interdisciplinary Learning Experiences – through collaborative special-projects courses, industry internships and research experiences, (iii) Pathways to Industry 4.0 Careers – to streamline career pathways to enter Industry 4.0 careers, and to pursue further education, and (iv) Faculty Development – continuous improvement via professional development workshops and faculty development leaves. It is expected that this project will help define and chart-out the capabilities demanded from the next-generation workforce to fulfill the call of Industry 4.0, and the curricular ingredients necessary to train and empower them. This will help create an empowered workforce well-suited for Industry 4.0 careers in cyber-enabled smart manufacturing. The collaborative research team’s experience so far in starting up and establishing the project has further shed light on some of the essentials and practicalities needed for achieving the grand vision of enabling the manufacturing workforce for the future. Altogether, the experience and lessons learned during the year-one implementation has provided a better perception of what is needed for imparting a broader impact through this project.more » « less
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