4zeroPlast project

APP available for Plastic industries to Industry 4.0 self assessment

After a little bit more of 2 years the 4Zeroplast project has been successfully completed and validated in the 3 countries of project partners: Portugal, Italy and Spain.     

The project aim was to strength the skills of Managers in the Plastics Industry (SMEs) to new business models and challenges launched by Industry 4.0 and assist them to evaluate and plan the applicability of I4.0 into their business.

More than 17 companies test it and now it is available for plastic companies managers to use the APP and get their personalized report!! Follow reading to learn more about it and try it!

What we are going to learn? – Training Materials
A training program was developed, aimed at strengthening the skills of Managers in the Plastics Industry (SMEs) to new business models and challenges launched by Industry 4.0 and assist them to evaluate and plan the applicability of I4.0 into their business.
The 4ZeroPlast training program will be facilitated through a guided learning App supported on an e-learning platform. The training is based in MOOC – Massive Open Online Course and follows a collaborative learning approach supported in training itineraries adapted to the pace of each trainee.                       
The structure of the MOOC consists of case studies / interviews, informative micro-pills, and various reference materials, facilitating the learning and integration of knowledge.
The case studies / interviews consist of video contributions with interviews of experts from companies providing their testimonials strongly related to the application of Industry 4.0 to plastics.
The micro-pills are short videos introducing sub-topics which are deemed as essential for the comprehension of the topic and for better understanding of reference materials.
Reference are training materials like papers, videos, documents, and infographics the student can use to deepen the knowledge on the specific topic. The training materials are available in English and the other 3 languages: Spanish, Italian, Portuguese.
The training lasts about 3 weeks and the course is divided into 3 modules, as follows:
– Module 1: Impact of Industry 4.0 in Plastic SMEs     
– Module 2: Basis of Industry 4.0
– Module 3: Strategy Innovation Management
Each module is composed of 4 main topics structured in learning units with a duration of one week each.
Each participant will be able to validate his knowledge on specific topics through an inquiry while always being able to reinforce his learning on the e-Learning platform. After that, he should complete a diagnosis to understand the current situation of his company regarding digitalization. Once the training is finished the trainee will obtain a personalized Report, supporting the definition of the strategy and applicability of Industry 4.0 within his company.

WHERE? –  e-learning platform

The training course for managers of plastic industry is provided through an e-learning plaform that uses Moodle as LMS (Learning Management System).

It contains 1 Moodle course organised into 4 sections, the content of which is filterable by language.

There are 4 languages available: English, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. The language chosen by the user affects also the interface translation.
It’s active the Single Sign On meccanism from App to Moodle LMS. To access the platform it is required to have an user; to have an user on the platform it is enough to register in the 4zeroPlast app and to enter its “E-learning” section.

It is not possible to create an account, retrieve the access data or log in directly from the platform, since these operations are managed by the app.

In the APP are published the courses included in the moodle platform, trougth one communication from APP and one moodle webservice.

The APP comunicate with webservice and this service transfer the information to the APP; in this way this two systems can comunicate.

HOW? –  the APP tool

The 4ZeroPlast project required a highly customized technical solution in order to provide a feasible and state of the art tool that would serve to CEO’s and other C-suite staff in plastic companies learn, evaluate their knowledge, and diagnose the state of their company regarding industry 4.0. 

For this purpose, we had clear that in order to make it a great solution, we had to create a mobile App that users were able to use “on the go”, but also with a process that was as easy as posible to use, so non-technical users could easily navigate the process.

So we created a back-end infrastrustucture based in the programming language Python, with the framework Django. This is one of the most modern and flexible frameworks for backend development in current times. This backend has an administration dashboard where admin users can edit the translations of the questions that appear on the mobile APPs, but mainly, it serves to follow-up on the user registrations and validation process, in order to analyze if users are getting into the APP and using it.

This Back-end has been put together with API’s in order to provide the data to the APPs. 

These APPs were developed in a native way both for Android and IOS to guarantee full compatibility with the biggest possible amount of users and devices.

All of this infrastructure is hosted in a Tier3+ Data Center in order to guarantee the greatest availability time and security levels for the tool.

Do you want to dive deep into Industry 4.0?

Download the APP from the official stores:

APP STORE

GOOGLE STORE

Visit our website: www.4zeroplast.eu