International cooperation for Industry 4.0 employee qualification

When signing the agreement, Technology Academy's CEO Thomas Rilke emphasised the importance of qualified workers for the development or establishment of industrial sites: “Only those who are ready to share their knowledge will benefit from sustainable success. Technologies for the digital transformation can only be applied successfully if their potential is clear to companies and their employees. This is why at the Industry Academies, both young workers and industry experts participate in application-oriented training programs.”

Roland Bent, Phoenix Contact's CTO, deems the cooperation with the Technology Academy an important step in the transfer of technology, stating: “Phoenix Contact is going to contribute its know-how and automation solutions to the establishment of Industry Academies worldwide to teach cutting-edge technical knowledge. There are many areas where energy consumption rates can be significantly reduced and production processes streamlined by replacing existing equipment with modern solutions. Therefore, we are going to co-design and co-construct laboratories for realistic and hands-on training on the wide variety of applications.”

Industry Academies in China, Singapore, South Africa, and Turkey are in the works. They will provide the knowledge about modern technology and thus propagate future technologies within those regions.

The Technology Academy is a subsidiary of Deutsche Messe AG, co-headed with Volkswagen Group Academy. The focus of Deutsche Messe Technology Academy's worldwide training centres is on technologies and services that will fundamentally change industrial production. Current topics are robotics and automation, Industry 4.0, 3-D printing, Virtual and Augmented Reality.