## 5 Discussion
### Technical Challenges and Future Studies  
When looking at the arrangement of education related to the SmartLab concept at Lapland UAS, the biggest challenge is the student group sizes. The group size can be up to 60-70 students and the study type is part-time where the students are physically present at the university three to four times per semester. The rest of the time the learning happens via distance-learning. Usually, the tasks derived from different SmartLab topics require a decent group size (e.g., a maximum of four students per task/device). This requires detailed planning of physical resources (e.g., space and time usage and group control) in a way that supports the division of groups sizes. The physical on-site learning with the SmartLab equipment requires also the support of digital technology. Concerning the Festo digital manufacturing and assembly line, the first supportive element is the Digital Twin concept where the students can plan and simulate the equipment online in the 3D environment. The students can perform the tasks before the actual physical environment. The group size in not a limiting factor in this case. When entering the physical SmartLab environment, the planning of the timetable and group sizes are an important issue. First, the total group must be divided into subgroups (e.g., 3 \(\times\) 20 students) where one group is in the laboratory environment at a time. After, the subgroup must be divided so that each task (e.g., machine vision and robotics) includes only a certain number of students. Therefore, the SmartLab concept must consist of numerous different learning tasks. Considering the AM environment, the most important task is the formation of the subgroups. The Lapland UAS mechanical engineering 3D printing environment allows a maximum of 20 students at a time so that the usage of the 3D printers is still efficient and logistically fluent. The AM equipment requires a physical presence of the students, so timetable planning is a key factor. Due to the nature of the AM process, the students must perform also a lot of independent work with the printers. Therefore, the reserving of printers and printing time require concentrated time reservation (e.g., as an online service) where the students and instructors can view the usage of the equipment. One key issue in this is the simulation of the AM process; the students must plan the actual printing with the AM slicing software, e.g., with SLS printing, the printing times are rather long, and the part removal must happen within a certain amount of time in order to preserve the properties of the polymer  
Figure 6: The SmartLab actors involved and supported to date. powder. This sets its own challenges to the planning of the printing time. During the writing process of this article, this online time reservation system is under development at the Lapland UAS mechanical engineering degree. One promising network to investigate further is The Network of Scandinavian Universities related to Festo CP factory systems. The focus of the network is to share experiences in training and research with the Festo CP factory system. The possible forms of co-operation include workshops and conference visits to locations with CP factory systems within the network participants. So far, the network consists of 19 participant institutions within the education field ranging from vocational institutes to technical universities. Other networks to consider are in line with the equipment and systems acquired within the ERDF project. The themed networks could involve machine automation, pneumatics, hydraulics, and condition monitoring of such systems. The additive manufacturing is also a very current theme for network participation as the area of research evolves rapidly. As with all networks around a specific theme, joining such would speed up the learning and utilization process and offer peer support on specific issues--if such might arise.