Students in Morocco: Automation projects for German companies
Moroccan universities and their students learn cutting-edge technologies from Germany and develop industrial automation projects for German and Moroccan companies at Industry 4.0 level in interdisciplinary small groups.
In this learning programme, developed by the Competence Centre Automation (CCoA), leading German companies in the electrical sector and Steinbeis University are committed to practice-oriented qualification in Morocco. The CCoA won dozens of industrial companies and technology networks to discover the talent pool in Morocco by assigning project tasks. The more than 300 highly motivated students who applied are representing the technical potential of Morocco.
The CCoA, which was founded at the beginning of 2021, primarily supports the automotive and food industries in Morocco. Siemens, Phoenix-Contact, Rittal, the industry association ZVEI and the Deutsche Messe Technology Academy are among those involved in the CCoA’s knowledge transfer project. The project is managed by Steinbeis University and funded by the German government the GIZ agency.
Practical tasks – without costs and obligations
In a first step, the CCoA trained professors from Morocco’s most important universities in the development and application of methods of networked production in the context of Industry 4.0 using the PLCnext platform of PhienixContact. “This qualification provides an excellent basis for cooperation between the participating universities and educational institutions in Morocco and German and Moroccan industry in all fields of industrial automation,” says Dr. Ardin Djalali, project manager of the CCoA and director at the Graduate School of Leadership and Management at Steinbeis University.
The concept jointly developed by the partners of the competence centre enabled industrial companies to assign very concrete and practical tasks to the universities and students, commissioned without any costs or further obligations for the German companies. Industry 4.0 experts reviewed the project proposals and forwarded them to Moroccan educational institutions.
Huge talent pool for technology in Morocco
The learning methods we have developed aim at a generic qualification with which the participants can understand very different industrial processes and learn the combination of many different elements and applications in industrial production.
“We want to convince companies and networks in Germany to get to know the economic potential of one of Africa’s most important emerging industrial countries in a very simple and practical way,” says John Ulrich Fimpel, who has supported the CCoA from the beginning as a business scout for the industry association. The CCoA measures were carried out on state-of-the-art learning platforms for Industry 4.0: “The learning methods we have developed aim at a generic qualification with which the participants can understand very different industrial processes and learn the combination of many different elements and applications in industrial production.” Jäckel is impressed by the high level of prior qualification of the Moroccan participants: “I was pleasantly surprised by the high quality of university education in Morocco. There is no difference in the training courses here compared to courses with graduates from universities in Germany.”