Interdisciplinary communication training in a learning factory environment to enforce the digital transformation in producing SMEs

In 2022, industrial companies are facing challenges such as high energy costs, an increasing level of uncertainty and the need for sustainability. The digital transformation is a promising opportunity in order to counteract these challenges. Literature shows that SMEs have problems in exploiting the potentials of the digital transformation. This is also supported by further studies suggesting that there is a higher degree of shopfloor digitalization in larger companies compared to SMEs. In general it is reported that the digital transformation is different in SMEs compared to larger companies, leading to different requirements in terms of competences and trainings. An interview study shows that the competence of “interdisciplinary communication”, communicating needs and discussing solutions with software- and hardware-providers in order to realize a digitalization project is of particular importance. At the same time, learning factories have proven to be a suitable learning environment for competence development regarding the digital transformation. This paper presents a learning factory-based training for the competence development in the field of “interdisciplinary communication”. It includes 1) the identified research gap, 2) the methodology, how the training was developed and evaluated, 3) the training and 4) the evaluation of this training. The training has already been evaluated in the learning factory of Graz University of Technology and showed high effectiveness.