Engineering Excellence for the Mobility Value Chain

Based on the project “Engineering Excellence for the Mobility Value Chain” (EE4M), this paper addresses the increasing need for training, re-, and upskilling of engineers in manufacturing enterprises in the mobility value chain. Recently, the European mobility value chain is influenced by a multitude of hyper-dynamic factors, like changing consumer behavior, disruptive technologies, etc., which leads to the fact that a continuous realignment of engineering education is indispensable. The focus is placed on operations management (OM) which is changing due to the two policy-driven and pre-dominant drivers “Industry 4.0” and “Sustainability”. The implementation of smart and sustainable concepts in OM in the mobility value chain entails both a transformation of production processes and a change in the working and learning processes of the employees. Companies are increasingly required to design, manage, and integrate learning processes and learning environments to provide a lifelong learning ecosystem and to prepare employees for changes in work and tasks. Moreover, educational institutions are challenged to successfully address those demands. Therefore, this paper introduces the European research project EE4M which focuses on the professional development of smart and sustainability competences of engineers in the mobility value chain through innovative educational modules supported by a transnational platform between the main drivers of the European mobility value chain. The innovation of the project can be explained by the fact that OM serves as the basis for empirically based realignment of engineering education to create requirement-orientated competence profiles.