TecHUB 4.0 - Technology and Entrepreneurship Education for Bridging the Gap in Smart Product Development

¹ University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, Splaiul Independentei 313, 060042, Bucharest, Romania
² Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Victoriei 10, 550024, Sibiu, Romania
³ Engineering School, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, LA1 4YW, Lancaster, UK
⁴ Czestochowa University of Technology, Dabrowskiego 69, 42 201, Czestochowa, Poland

^* Corresponding author: mihaela.ulmeanu@upb.ro

Abstract

Additive manufacturing is a worldwide trend and has been successfully adopted in a wide variety of domains. With applications ranging from automotive, aerospace, military, consumer goods bioprinting and even wearable electronics, the need for trained workforce in additive manufacturing is in high demand. Academia all around the world is adapting to this new trend trying to develop new strategies in delivering suitable competences to their undergraduate, masters’ and PhD students. Such an initiative is the Erasmus+ project TecHUB 4.0 which brings together four complementary universities from Romania, United Kingdom and Poland. The main goal of the project is to bring together professors, industry specialists, researchers, managers, and entrepreneurs to deliver, using methods based on modern teaching technologies, especially on the use of web-based platforms and digital technologies – e-learning and interactive platforms, their knowledge to the young students wishing to become entrepreneurs in the additive manufacturing area. An Open Interactive Platform will be designed to be used equally by companies, by universities and by students, which will aggregate the demand and offer for internships developed in the scope of developing projects anchored in the day-to-day additive manufacturing business activity to solve concrete problems, but at the same time respecting all the economic constraints imposed on a business at beginning of its life.