Kazarinoff, P.
(Ed.)
Different perspectives on the “Future of Work” can cause disconnections between the technician skills needed by industry and those taught by the educational programs preparing technicians to participate in Industry 4.0 (I4.0) manufacturing environments. Variations in the methodology of identifying, grouping, and describing technical skills and skill areas are driven by variations in sources of information and the industries and locales they represent. This paper summarizes for the ATE audience a FLATE (Florida Advanced Technological Education Center of Excellence) project [1]—Technician Future of Work Issues Caucus for Florida Community Colleges and Manufacturers (DUE 1939173)—that compared the skills needed by Florida manufacturers to the skills taught at two-year Florida colleges, and then mapped those skills to the I4.0 skills identified by a national sampling of technology-focused industries carried out by the CORD project Preparing Technicians for the Future of Work (DUE 1839567) [2]. Specifically, the paper (i) reviews the I4.0 technology skills identified by the Boston Consulting Group; (ii) presents I4.0 skill interactions with the results from the CORD and FLATE projects; and (iii) maps Florida-identified technician skill needs to the Cross-Disciplinary STEM Core skills identified at the national level by the CORD project. The paper also summarizes the process for integration of the I4.0 technology-related skills into the AS engineering technology program offered by twenty-two colleges in the Florida State College System [3,4,5].
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