Advanced Programmable Logic Controllers, Robotics, and Networking

Lone Star College System District, Spring TX

Investigators

Abstract

According to the Wall Street Journal, manufacturing executives indicate that they struggle to find workers with the required skills to operate in the modern factory, despite the presence of two unemployed manufacturing workers per manufacturing job opening (Sussman, 2016), because there is a knowledge gap between traditional and current and future industry requirements due to the accelerated pace of technological advances. In collaboration with industry partners, this project at Lone Star College University Park (LSC-UP) in Texas entitled Advanced PLC, Robotics, and Networking is designed to better prepare technicians to operate and maintain modern factory machines and work in the digital plant of the future, thus enhancing the employability of graduates and developing a diverse, globally competitive science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce. Project activities will include curriculum and educational materials development, the evaluation of curriculum, and dissemination of the knowledge gained. It will assist employees as they become more employable and are trained on cutting edge industry standard equipment. This will allow future employees to enhance their personal well-being and that of their families while increasing the economic competiveness of the United States by ensuring that employee education and training keeps pace with employer demand and is aligned with industry skill needs. The knowledge obtained from this project will allow for the dissemination of industry driven curricula to transform the education and training of technicians to account for advancing technology and lead to long term enhanced technician education at the college as the courses are institutionalized through the Energy & Manufacturing Institute. The curricula will be disseminated through a paper for publication, conference presentations, and submission to the Workforce Education Course Manual (WECM), impacting the education of technicians at higher education institutions across the state and the country. To address the industry needs for a multi-skilled technician to work in the manufacturing plant of the future that will rely heavily on integrated and intelligent ecosystems that use real-time and historical data to run efficiently and safely, the college will stack computer networking courses upon their current Mechatronics Technician education and training programs. Two new Mechatronics courses will be developed to incorporate computer networking to better prepare technicians for the modern digital plant. These new networking courses will provide students with the knowledge, skills, and competencies necessary to utilize the distributed control systems used to control manufacturing processes that are continuous or batch-oriented as well as the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems used for remote monitoring and control in technical workplaces. This project will advance knowledge regarding technician education and training by identifying the emerging needs of employers hiring graduates of Mechatronics programs. The curricula will be evaluated by industry partners to ascertain its compliance with the current and projected needs of the occupations supported by Mechatronics programs, such as engineering technicians, process technicians, and mechatronics technicians.