Concept, Challenges, and Learning Benefits Developing an Industry 4.0 Learning Factory with Student Projects A wide range of skills, knowledge, and competencies are required and expected from students to solve current problems for digitalization. One opportunity to teach and gain knowledge for the digitalization of manufacturing systems is the use of learning factories. Motivated by previously developed learning factories for digitalization in manufacturing, the research team of the productionplanning lab of the University of Applied Sciences EmdenLeer decided to build its own learning factory. The paper provides an overview of the developed learning factory, physical and digital structure, requirements, challenges, and learning benefits to build a learning factory with the aid of student projects. The paper concludes with a summary and ideas for future work.

Challenges in Implementing Industry 4 Laboratories and Learning Factories in Academia Specialised laboratories and learning factories can play a significant role in developing and advancing the Industry 4 concept and production systems. However, there are many challenges that need to be addressed before creating qualified laboratories that have true Industry 4 characteristics. Some of those challenges originate from the varied definitions of Industry 4, from what different institutions and research groups consider criticaltrivial to implement in a laboratory, from Universitiesu0027 policies and regulations, and even taxation rules. Many challenges derive from the complexity of the Industry 4 ecosystem and its continuous evolution. The objective of this paper is to provide a systematic analysis of the challenges in implementing viable Industry 4 laboratories in academia. These challenges need to be defined explicitly before they can be addressed, and relevant laboratories developed to maximise the success of what can be significant investment.