Experiences from 10 years LEAD Factory and a Roadmap for the Next Decade

After three years of development, the first learning factory course was taught with 16 students in June 2014 at Graz University of Technology, Austria. What began as a small-scale assembly site to offer students hands-on training experience on the subject of lean production ten years later, is now a learning factory for Industry 4.0 and beyond. The learning content has been extended including digitalization, human-centered work design, sustainability, and agility or resiliency topics. Its equipment has been continuously updated, including small-scale production machinery and digital technologies. Consequently, also the name was changed to LEAD Factory to address all subjects and challenges covered in education, research, and industrial training. Just like real production systems, the LEAD Factory has to keep reinventing itself. This paper outlines the history of one of the first Austrian learning factories and frame plans for the near future.