Students retain what they have learnt more effectively when they link it directly to practical application. That is why the wbk has set up the ‘Global Production’ learning factory in its production technology laboratory: here, students can see and try out various Industry 4.0 applications first-hand on a real industrial assembly line for electric motors. This allows them to configure assembly steps manually or automatically as required, there is a decentralised safety and control system as well as a station for human-robot collaboration. The digital shop floor management system displays recorded data and information directly whilst simultaneously analysing it.

In doing so, the learning factory at the wbk has a unique focus: it is currently the only one in the world that deals exclusively with challenges characteristic of production within global networks. More and more products are no longer manufactured at a single site, but in factories spread across the globe that work closely together within a network. For this reason, students learn, on the one hand, how individual sites differ from one another, for example in terms of technical equipment, degree of automation, cost structure or staff qualifications. On the other hand, the learning factory aims to demonstrate how stakeholders in a global production network can manage the existing complexity and strategically allocate competencies across the individual sites. The system implemented at the wbk is part of a global production network and is linked to the wbk sites in China, the Global Advanced Manufacturing Institute and the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Centre.
Modules in the learning factory form part of the degree programmes in Mechanical Engineering (M.Sc.), Industrial Engineering, Technical Economics and Engineering Education (both B.Sc. and M.Sc.) at KIT. Students can thus develop professional competence in a realistic environment and learn to solve the challenges of modern production in a self-organised manner. The theoretical foundations are taught via an e-learning course, which covers the topics of location and process factors, production control, quality management, scalable automation, supplier selection, network planning and circular production in five modules that build on one another.