The SM-TMC (South Mediterranean Tunisian Maintenance Centre of Excellence) project

The paper presents the planned activities of the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education for development and delivery of innovative curricula in maintenance engineering. The SM-TMC (Southern Mediterranean Maintenance Centre of Excellence) project, led by the University of Sfax, establishes, among others, a framework for Higher Education in Maintenance Engineering to equip students with competences in Industry, Informatics and Communications to lead generic maintenance skills and, in particular, Maintenance 4.0. The project started with a needs analysis survey involving higher education institutions and many industry stakeholders in Tunisia to analyse the status of educational programmes on maintenance engineering education. Issues relating to curriculum development were identified, such as the increasing needs in training teachers with a high degree of specialised knowledge and skills to carry out a creative and interdisciplinary maintenance engineering curriculum. In addition, universities do not maintain close links with industry to boost the practical competence of their graduates. To address the problems and challenges identified, universities and companies from Tunisia, France, Portugal, Romania, and Spain are sharing human and technological resources and infrastructures to design new curricula, based on the European Credit Transfer System, to be used in the partners’ educational programmes in maintenance engineering. The project is in the pilot testing phase of the innovative curricula.