Lean school: an example of industry-university collaboration

Abstract

In the recent past, a vibrant debate emerged about talent management and the set of skills and competencies the future employees must possess to meet current and future market needs. Moreover, the lack of engineering students’ professional competencies and their inability to correlate and apply the theoretical knowledge they acquire during their studies in practical contexts, when they enter the labour market, lead to an investment in action-oriented learning and experiential learning. In this context, the learning factory concept is being put into practice by universities and companies to equip students and employees with the demanded needs. In this paper, an Industry-University collaboration between Renault company and the University of Valladolid is presented, centred in the development of a learning factory devoted to the learning and practicing of lean manufacturing through a set of training courses offered to engineering students and professionals. The lean factory characteristics as well as the learning process and learning results achieved are presented.