Coronavirus: Italian 3D printers do their part in the battle

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The story, all Italian, told by the BBC (here the article) is exciting.

A hospital in Brescia (north of Italy) had 250 patients with coronavirus in intensive care, and its valve supplier was unable to produce all the valves necessary to cover the need. When an Italian journalist realized this, she put the hospital in contact with the General Manager of Isinnova, a 3D printer company. They went to the hospital for a quick visit and, three hours later, they had produced and tested a 3D printed prototype on a patient.

covid 19

The result? One hundred respiratory valves printed in 24 hours.

Isinnova has also joined forces with another local 3D printer company to meet demand. These companies are working for free, and the operators have been working non-stop for days but with a single thought: to help save lives, and mechatronics is at the basis of such technology and production capabilities.

Source: https://bbc.in/2KExDVN

Coronavirus: the concrete contribution of Mechatronics Sicilian Companies

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The world is under attack by Coronavirus, and mechatronics is not watching.

A fantastic example of the contribution that mechatronics can and is giving to the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic is the District of Mechatronics in Sicily, which includes 110 companies in the electronics, mechanics, automation and information technology sectors located in every part of the island.

A stock of 230 thousand 80 ml bottles of hand sanitizers in two or three days, 1,000 filtering masks in TNT cotton per day to reach 10,000 per day in 48 hours; 600 3D protective covers per week to reach 1,500 pieces per week. These are the numbers of the production made by 8 of the 110 companies that have been able to immediately convert their factories to do their part in this battle.

The prototypes of the “made in Sicily” devices and the related technical datasheets have been sent to the Regional Manager of Civil Protection. The words of Antonello Mineo, president of the Mechatronics District: “We are overwhelmed with requests from private individuals, but we want to give priority to Civil Protection, to provide support to the many doctors and nurses who are engaged in a relentless fight against COVID-19 and who unfortunately don’t have the necessary quantities of safety devices.” And he adds: “In 48 hours we created a net to be immediately ready to make the prototypes and to acquire the raw material to start the first production batches. Many other companies are already calling us to join the supply chain. This operation aims at giving a concrete response to the emergency.”

Source: https://bit.ly/3eWByLs

In Italy the demand for specialized technicians is growing, and Technical Institutes can be the answer

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The transition to Industry 4.0 requires a large number of ICT professionals, such as Data Scientist and Innovation Manager.

Having advanced ICT systems is fundamental for the competitiveness of Italian companies, to maintain high product quality and provide value-added services to customers, with rapid production and delivery times. Also, it is essential to work towards increasing the efficiency of the production process.

Two fundamental factors to complete the transition to industry 4.0 must be kept in mind: the presence of ICT services and skills within companies/industries and the desire to continually innovate the approach to production, services and customers.

Consequently, in addition to “classic” profiles, such as ICT technicians, which represent the basis for applying technologies to new operating and analysis methods, new profiles are making their way, requiring a series of transversal skills and, in some cases, process experiences that can be only matured over time.

Data in hand, in Italy about 50% of job offers for IT, telematics, electronic and telecommunication technicians have difficulties in being satisfied, and about 25% are even closed without obtaining applications.

The education system today is not able to produce a sufficient number of profiles for the ICT sectors to meet the needs of the Italian industry. In reality, it is also reasonable because when there is a sector transformation, there is a physiological delay due to the training course (3 or 5 years) compared to when a very marked need arises.

The Technical Institutes provide an excellent compromise to form interesting profiles with shorter times compared to an academic cycle. To date, 90 Technical Institutes are active in Italy, even if they are chosen as a post-diploma course still by a too-small number of graduates. It seems necessary to give more awareness to young people to the potential of the market for these highly specialized figures and the skills they can obtain in the Technical Institutes.

 

source: https://bit.ly/3aqiAtn

Industry 4.0: in Italy the demand for specialized technicians is growing

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Industry 4.0 is rapidly changing Italian companies, starting with SMEs.

Sabrina De Santis, Federmeccanica’s Education Director interviewed by Il Sole 24ore, the leading Italian business newspaper, says that it is “A revolution that requires new and higher skills, digital skills, some capability in statistics to read the data, lots of problem solving, to name a few, alongside with traditional, technical-scientific ones.”

Federmeccanica’s awareness of the urgency of tackling the training issue comes from this considerations.

“For this reason – De Santis adds – we are partners of the European New Metro project (www.newmetro.eu) – where also the Ministry of Education and the Mechatronics Technical Schools Network are also involved. The New Metro project is developing a new curriculum at EU level, which contaminates more traditional knowledge and new skills aiming at training “super experts” to be employed in our factories.

The process has now reached an irreversible point, and it is crucial that the entire Italian technical and scientific-professional training chain supports it. Focusing on the data, a recent analysis by Confindustria has shown that, in the next three years, the “core” sectors of “Made in Italy” manufacturing will need about 200 thousand professionals, number that at the moment the training chain is not able to guarantee.

The central theme is “high skills”, and they not only concern Italy: from now to 2025, a considerable number of new professionals will be needed in Europe to support Industry 4.0. And soft skills will also take on high importance: from creativity to problem-solving, from the ability to work in team to autonomy/responsibility in the execution of tasks.

 

Source: https://www.ilsole24ore.com/

mechatronic meeting

New Metro Project European Design Workshop

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Industry 4.o, mechatronic

Meeting Agenda

co founded Erasmus+

 

July 4th 2019
Avenue de la Joyeuse Entrée, 1- Bruxelles
Confindustria Delegation in Bruxelles

New Metro Project
European Design Workshop

10.00 am

Participants registration

10.10 am

Welcome by Confindustria

L. Pinna, Confindustria Delegation in Bruxelles

10.20 am

Stakeholder dialogue in New Metro validation process

L. Quattrocchi, SFC

10.30 am

Stakeholder introduction: best practices and

Tour de Table

11.15 am

Emerging skills in mechatronic: from research results to new challenges

G. Marzano, Rezekne  Academy of Technologies

12.00 am

Emerging skills in mechatronic: debate with stakeholders

L. Quattrocchi, SFC

01.00 pm

Wrap-up

01.15 pm

Light Lunch

The New Metro meetings of July 4th (European Design Workshop)will be held at the headquarters of:
Confindustria Delegation in Bruxelles
Avenue de la Joyeuse Entrée, 1- Bruxelles
 
mechatronic meeting

NEW METRO Kick-off Meeting

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NEW METRO – embeddiNg kEts and Work based learning into MEchaTROnic profile

Project n. 600984-EPP-1-2018-1-IT-EPPKA2-SSA

Kick-off Meeting

12 February 2019

 

  • “Project vision on Mechatronic Skills in the I4.0 Environment and Beyond
  • Overview of the Project and presentation of the partnership
  • NEW METRO Project: tasks and expected results
  • Project Management Structure. Budgetary & Financial issues
  • Evaluation and Quality Plan: goals and tools
  • Overview of Work Packages and of Integrated Design of Joint Learning Supply (WP2)
  • Proposal “New Metro”
  • Grant Agreement
  • Erasmus+ guide
  • Evaluation report EACEA on Proposal “New Metro”
  • WP1: Participatory Review and validation of already
    available training need analysis
  • WP2: Integrated Design of Joint Learning Supply
  • WP3: Development of Competences Framework and NEW
    METRO curriculum in terms of specific learning
    outcomes
  • WP4: Development of Learning delivery model
  • WP5: Piloting and Validation
  • WP6: Valorisation, dissemination and exploitation
  • WP7: Project Management
  • WP8: Quality manager

European Design Workshop

Project Monitoring and Coordination meeting

NewMetro’s Partner Rezekne Academy of Technologies published a paper on Mechatronics learning

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Industry 4.0, is a term introduced by the German government in 2011. It refers to the 4th Industrial Revolution where disruptive digital technologies (such as the Internet of Things, robotics, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence) have an impact on industrial production. Over the last few years, the term Industry 4.0 has become an often-quoted buzzword, used to describe digitalization in any phase of the value chain of an enterprise.

An educational module on Industry 4.0 for higher education students

For the 2019-2020 academic year, the Rezekne Academy of Technologies (Rezekne, Latvia) decided to introduce an experimental module on Industry 4.0 into the Mechatronic curriculum. The leader of the mechatronics course was persuaded that the course curriculum should be revised and integrated to provide students with new notions and competences to tackle the changes brought about by the 4th industrial revolution (this finding also emerged as an essential theme from the European Union Erasmus+ Project NewMetro, where Rezekne Academy of Technologies is Partner).

Content for the learning module on Industry 4.0 was decided by professors and researchers with a wide range of backgrounds such as machine control, computer science, and process optimization.

From the first lessons, it was evident that the learning program should be periodically modified and integrated.

Another issue was that students participating in the Industry 4.0 module had different backgrounds in computer science and had varying levels of familiarity with computer programming.

 

Conclusions of the experience:

The training experience carried out in support of this learning module at the Rezekne Academy of Technologies has been extremely useful. It highlighted:

  • Need to introduce a module on artificial intelligence
  • Need to develop a knowledge of intelligent problem-solving, appropriate to the context of industrial production
  • Need to deal with the integration of processes and industrial production issues
  • Need to focus attention on concrete cases of the industrial output, preparing exercises that allow students to become familiar with the main problems in the field, and the techniques for finding solutions.

Source: TEACHING INDUSTRY 4.0, Gilberto Marzano and Andris Martinov, Rezekne Academy of Technologies, Rezekne, Latvia, Spoleczna Akademia Nauk, Łódź, Poland

In Molise mechatronics is used to solve the problems of the human body

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The Molise health system has obtained another prestigious recognition by the Ministry of Health, which sees the IRCCS Neuromed ranked first among the Scientific Institutes of Hospitalization and Care. This result is related to the percentage of patients from other regions: more than 84% decide to use the health services of the institute of Pozzilli a small town in the Italian Molise region.

The ministerial report also highlights that this structure is gaining on the field a level of satisfaction of its users above the national average and exceeds the national average for the absolute number of published scientific papers.

The development and improvement of 3D printing techniques applied to biomedicine are also carried out in its mechanical laboratories, providing support also to external health structures that need to recreate three-dimensional models of body parts for multiple applications. A new frontier that will be increasingly important to face the ailments that afflict the nervous system and that require surgery of the highest precision.

Every part of this type of technique involves mechatronics and skills in this field will be extensively required in the near future.

 

Source: http://colibrimagazine.it/salute-e-benessere/la-stampa-3d-applicata-al-corpo-umano/

stylios glavas kerameos mechatronic in vet

Minister of Education, Niki Kerameos, visited the Laboratory of Knowledge and Intelligent Computing

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Minister of Education, Niki Kerameos, visited the Laboratory of Knowledge and Intelligent Computing and had a briefing by Prof. Chrysostomos Stylios, Director of the Laboratory, on the project New METRO. The following discussion was attended by Triantafyllos Albanis, Rector of the University of Ioannina, Stavros Nikolopoulos, Vice-Rector of the University of Ioannina, Evripidis Glavas, Dean of the Dep. of Informatics & Telecommunications, Konstantinos Angelis, Professor of the Dep. of Informatics & Telecommunications.

stylios glavas kerameos mechatronic in vet