Advancing Learning Factories: Enabling Future-Ready Skills

Industrial companies aim to offer unique products and service bundles to their customers. At the same time, they must shape their value-adding processes to address current challenges such as digitalization, intelligent systems, resilience, human-centredness, and sustainability. Managing these necessary transition processes relies heavily on staff competency. Ultimately, well-prepared students, qualified engineers, and workers must plan and implement the required steps. Qualification processes must be oriented towards these practical requirements. Thus, appropriate learning systems for developing the competencies needed to set up and operate new production processes are crucial for the factory of the future.

Learning factories are recognized as a promising path to meet these future needs. They provide an interactive learning environment where pilot or real-scale processes and technologies are in place, allowing direct access to the product creation process (product development, manufacturing, quality management, logistics). Learning factories are based on a didactical concept that emphasizes experimental and problem-based learning. The continuous improvement philosophy is facilitated by the participants’ own actions and interactive involvement.

Through the learning factory, various stakeholders can grasp the complex technical and organizational interrelationships of today’s industrial environment and acquire the competencies to systematically improve it. The Conference on Learning Factories (CLF) provides a regular platform for academic, educational, and industrial stakeholders to exchange the latest knowledge and developments in this domain.

The Conference on Learning Factories (CLF) is the annual conference of the International Association of Learning Factories (IALF), attracting top academics and researchers in the field of learning factories to meet, engage, and share their R&D findings. The goal of the CLF is to promote cooperation among members to achieve excellence in teaching and research in the field of learning factories. Each year, the conference attracts about 130 participants worldwide.

The 15th Conference on Learning Factories (CLF) was hosted by the Department of Industrial Engineering at Stellenbosch University, in the beautiful town of Stellenbosch, South Africa. The conference covered the following main topics: technology implementation and evaluation related to learning factories, learning and didactic processes and evaluation related to learning factories, learning factory business models and cooperation (industry and academic), learning factory concepts and infrastructure, and learning factories for sustainability and resilience.

Louis Louw Professor of Industrial Engineering at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and a registered professional engineer.  He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering, with a research focus on production system design and control using the Theory of Constraints. After 12 years in business consulting and management across various industries, he joined academia in 2014. His current research focuses on digitalisation and Industry 4.0-enabled operations and supply chain management. He has over 40 publications, serves on two international scientific committees, and is a member of the IALF and SAIIE.

Vera Hummel Professor at Reutlingen University, Germany, and extraordinary professor at Stellenbosch University. Her research focuses on smart factories, sustainable production, and learning factories. She leads the Reutlingen Zentrum Industrie 4.0 and is the founding director of Werk150. She holds a doctorate from Wroclaw University of Technology and has industry experience with Mercedes-Benz and Fraunhofer IPA. Since 2023, she serves as president of the International Association on Learning Factories (IALF).

Imke de Kock Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering at Stellenbosch University and a registered Industrial Engineer. She has international experience in consulting and project management across multiple continents. She holds degrees in Engineering, Philosophy (Futures Research), and a PhD in Industrial Engineering. Her research focuses on technology management and sustainable futures. She co-leads the Health Systems Engineering and Innovation Hub and is part of the Engineering Management and Sustainable Systems research group.

Konrad von Leipzig Recently retired Professor from Stellenbosch University, where he served for 37 years. He is a registered Industrial Engineer with expertise in Production Planning, Supply Chain Management, and Engineering Economics. After working in industry for four years, he began his academic career in 1987. He remains a member of the SAIIE.