Capacity development by implementation of PLC trainings towards Industry 4.0

The Asean Factori 4.0 project aims to contribute for the enhancement of education in the field of industrial automation in 6 Asian universities from Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Specialists from 3 EU universities from France and Bulgaria have participated in the project. A Centre of excellence consisting of 6 distributed PLC labs will be developed in the 6 Asian universities. Specialists from the University of Ruse are involved in the development of two of the six PLC labs, as well as all training resources. The main objectives and the partner consortium of the project are presented in this paper. The organisation of the intensive ten days training for the Asian staff is analysed: programme, teaching schedule and materials. The pedagogical benchmark was designed based on the Beckhoff and Eaton-Moeller brands of PLCs and includes all learning sources for an intensive training course. The hardware architecture and the necessary software of the benchmark were specified in order to meet the expected functionalities and learning outcomes and is described in the paper. The training of the Asian staff is based on practical examples and aims the acquisition of new knowledge and skills about different types of PLCs, the architecture, characteristics and methods of programming of PLCs. The training is focused on a basic technical tool for automation of technological processes and industrial networks. Conclusions and planned future work in the project are presented in the paper.