Project-ID: FTI17-012
Project start: 01. February 2019
Runtime: 24 months / ongoing
Funding amount: € 169.000,00

Brief summary

This proposal extends existing research on competence development towards I4.0 Competence Development in Manufacturing Companies. By applying a mixed-methods approach we follow a design-based research design integrating practical experiences from production managers (collected through focus groups) and conceptualize a competency model. Next, we will challenge our competency model in a real-life setting to test hypotheses deriven from the literature review as well as from our own design-based research. This quantitative Digital Competence Achievement Plan (D-CAP) evaluative research will study the adaptation of the competencies over one year to support continuous improvement in the implementation of the model. Industry 4.0 (I4.0) describes the vision of future production influenced by digitalization. Adaptive digitalization and networking of machines, working parts, employees and other entities on the plant floor are core of realizing I4.0, so that information and instruction will be available everywhere and all the time in the production process. This represents the starting point for the project consortium of this proposal, which will focus on competence development in manufacturing companies in Lower Austria. Using mixed methods involves collecting and analysing both qualitative and quantitative data in the project and, going in a different direction than previous researchers, we choose a design-based research setting in order to integrate the practical perspective of a cohort of 14 Production Managers in Austrian businesses.There are two main reasons for choosing a design-based research approach: First, it allows to build on the practical socioeconomic system of Lower Austria and second, as a result, its iterative cycles of testing allow to test the competency model in practice within the multilayered innovation system. Hence, the challenge refers to a basic and fundamental understanding of competencies related to digital transformation. The scientific challenge of this proposal is to investigate whether a design-based research can improve employees’ digital competences during work in production companies in collaboration with co-workers and colleagues. We distinguish in this design based research four connected phases: (1) preliminary research, (2) prototyping based on a Focus group cycle of research, (3) formative evaluation for improving and refining the intervention, and (4) summative evaluation in order to conclude whether the interventions are effective for employees’ digital competence development. Another scientific challenge of this proposal is to continue to expand the evaluative research begun during the Industrie 4.0 study (Kormann et al., 2018) and to use a continuous improvement process involving results design-based research to elaborate a digital competency model in manufacturing companies based on a cross-sectional quantitative survey.