European Association of the Machine Tool Industries CECIMO launched METALS – MachinE Tool Alliance for Skills. METALS aims at providing machine tool builders with the sought-after applied skills they need in line with disruptive technologies in the advanced manufacturing sector. METALS is a three-year project inaugurated under the EU’s Erasmus+ Sector Skills Alliance initiative, designed to promote education-industry partnerships at European-level within a specific sector of the economy.
New manufacturing technologies generate business opportunities for machine tool builders, but the development of new skills is not commonly supported by vocational education and training (VET) programmes. Therefore, finding a workforce with the right practical competences remains a challenge for many machine tool builders in Europe. Under this light, CECIMO’s German (VDW), Italian (UCIMU) and Spanish (AFM) national associations have developed METALS to improve the relevance of VET in the machine tool industry by bringing together industry representatives, VET providers and regulatory bodies from the three countries. The Alliance first analyses emerging technologies in the sector and builds a skills panorama highlighting the future skills needed by European machine tool builders. In the second phase, the Alliance will design a sector-wide curriculum and gather relevant learning materials which will be available through an e-learning platform for the European machine tool workforce. Metal additive manufacturing, a disruptive technology, will be under the spotlight of METALS.
By bringing together partners from education and industry across Europe, METALS is expected to improve the sector’s labour market intelligence. It will provide policy-makers with the sectorial insights they need to design policies and programmes boosting the competitiveness of European machine tool companies and the employability of its workforce. Throughout the initiative, the consortium will also organize skills workshops in Germany, Spain and Italy with the participation of relevant stakeholders.
