Smart Skills @ Scale (S@S):
Toward a future proof skilled Smart Industry

The large majority of companies lack the human skills to implement and fully utilise Smart Industry technologies, thereby endangering Smart Industry’s survival and success. This project connects top research groups, fieldlabs, their affiliated 450 SMEs, and social partners to realise a major societal breakthrough towards a Smart industry sector that continuously and integrally supports the operational workforce and organisations in adopting and adapting technology and incorporating those technologies into local and tacit production knowledge.

Our smart skills approach rests on four pillars that operate on worker-, work-, workplace- and inter-organisational level, respectively: (1)smart production systems; (2)smart future jobs and careers; (3)smart workplaces; (4)smart inter-organisational infrastructures. These joint elements ensure that Smart Industry can make the adoption, use and mastery of technology an integral part of modern production work and, as such, that production workers remain robust and resilient to face the challenges of the 21st century.

We address two cluster-questions: (049)How can we ensure that our labour force and labour market organisations remain robust and resilient as they face the challenges of the 21st century?; (107)How can we anticipate the impact of new technologies on humans and society, and understand and evaluate the influence of existing technologies?

Research questions are:
-How can we optimise worker-technology interplay and design production systems in which workers are involved and guided to use and appropriate technologies?
-How can work be redesigned to incorporate technology and stimulate employability and productivity of (potential) workers?
-How can we design a workplace that accelerates workers to utilise and renew their skills?
-How can we shape interorganisational collaborations that stimulate skill utilisation and development?
Our multidisciplinary multilevel design goes beyond (inter-)national research by synthesizing and extending research streams (e.g., manufacturing systems, HR(D), workplace innovation) and ensures impact and innovation uptake because crucial stakeholders are involved from start to end.