IALF Presidency

In the course of the 12th Conference on Learning Factories in Singapore, the annual General Assembly of the International Association of Learning Factories (IALF) was held on April 13th. The IALF is a network of 30 professors who run learning factories at various universities - including TU Darmstadt, TU Munich, Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology, Purdue University, Tongji University and Stellenbosch University of South Africa.

Prof. Christian Ramsauer was elected as the president of the IALF in July 2021.

The head of the working group Industrial Management, Maria Hulla, serves as General Secretary.

The association has the following objectives:

• Promote the exchange of knowledge, best practices and learning modules in learning factories.
• Close cooperation with industry regarding learning factory set-up and training in learning factories
• Establish joint research activities
• Create synergies in learning factory infrastructure, and
• Anticipating new technologies and integrating them into learning factories.

During the General Assembly, recent learning factory projects will be presented. The IIM is currently working on the EIT-Manufacturing project „LeNuWas“ on Leaning Nuggets to digital assistance systems together with TU Darmstadt, TU Wien and Ruhr Universität Bochum. Furthermore, results of the 10 working groups were discussed in different areas such as Mixed Reality, Circular Economy and competence transfer with learning factory reference.

In order to strengthen the scientific relevance of the IALF, since last year there has also been a Scientific Committee with Dr. Matthias Wolf, which supports the IALF working groups and also the organizers of the Learning Factory Conferences with regard to scientific issues.

Prof. Vera Hummel (ESB Reutlingen) was elected as the new Vice President, and Prof. Wilfried Sihn (TU Vienna), Prof. Ragu Athinarayanan (Purdue University), Prof. Peter Plapper (Luxembourg University) and Dr. Tan Puay Siew (Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology) as new members of the Presidential Committee. The task of the Presidential Committee is to support the President of the Association in strategic decisions.

Prof. Valeriy Vyatkin from Aalto University Finland and Prof. Klaus Schützer from the University of São Paulo were admitted as members of the IALF, thus further expanding the internationalization of the association.