The topic of Industry 4.0 will play an increasingly important role in future curricula. For this reason, the vocational school in Tübingen tackled the topic at an early stage. The two new laboratories are an important building block in an even larger project of the school, which it calls "School 4.0". The goal of this overall project is to take up the topic of digitization in order to keep pace with current developments and requirements from the business world. The two labs are intended to better illustrate the topic of Industry 4.0 and bring it closer to the students. In addition, further labs for other occupational fields, such as carpentry and the automotive industry, have been created as part of the project. In this way, the school pursues the goal of not lagging behind technological developments in the economy, but of being a pioneer.
At the same time, the project served as an opportunity to participate in the "Learning Factories 4.0" funding program of the state of Baden-Württemberg. The procurement of the CP Lab systems, with which the school mainly works, was therefore strongly supported by the Ministry of Economics as part of the funding program, but the school's sponsor, the district of Tübingen, also made a significant contribution.
The idea for the School 4.0 project was developed before 2018.
However, due to a lack of space, the implementation was delayed again and again. In 2018, it turned out that the workshop building could be rebuilt and new rooms created in the course of this. As part of the first wave of the Learning Factories 4.0 funding program of the state of Baden-Württemberg, there was already an initial exchange between the vocational school and Festo Didactic.
In the course of the second wave in 2018, in which the school's desire to participate in the program arose, the exchange was intensified. Several meetings and discussions took place, during which rough concept ideas for the two labs were outlined. The school wanted to take a different, novel approach than at other schools. So a basic solution was quickly found, with which the school applied for the funding program.
After receiving a funding commitment in 2019, the basic idea was further refined between March and August 2019. The labs were then finally commissioned in 2020.
It took about 2.5 years from the initial planning to the commissioning of the labs.
The basic laboratory serves to teach the fundamentals of PLC programming, networking and MES. This laboratory is designed for a maximum class size of 16 students. It is equipped with 8 functional double lab workstations from the elneos®Line furniture line, which include an integrated energy channel and an experimental frame for DINA4 panel mounting. These are complemented by 8 double workstations in the center of the room, which can be used for theoretical instruction. The CP-Lab belts with the drilling and turning modules can be flexibly moved out of the cabinets to the workstations for the exercises.
In the second lab, there is an intelligent I4.0 system consisting of an 8-unit CP-Lab Karree in combination with a CP-Factory, which includes a robot cell and a milling machine. The school uses this plant to manufacture the bottom part of an individual cell phone holder, which is customized and ordered beforehand via a web store. Thus, the entire process chain of I4.0 is practically learned and taught. The Robotino® also addresses the topic of mobile robotics.
Customer benefits:
"For us as a school, the new I4.0 labs play a central role, as they not only give us an image advantage, but also a higher location significance. We can now invite business enterprises from the region and communicate and meet with these companies at eye level. The use of a smart factory gives us a higher status as a school, as if we were still working with conventional plug-in boards in PLC technology."