Information Technology Education in a Digital Factory Learning Environment

This paper presents the vision, construction, and implementation of an Integrated Manufacturing Technology (IMT) laboratory for higher education. The laboratory introduces integration of Information Technology (IT) in manufacturing processes and provides hands-on learning experience in an authentic, holistic, and automated production environment, not commonly found in academic teaching. The manufacturing process includes fully-automated, semi-automated, and manual stations and is supported by a heterogeneous IT infrastructure, including manufacturing databases, shop-floor control, data warehousing, business intelligence, and enterprise systems. The IMT laboratory is used to facilitate learning in a databases course and a business intelligence course, resulting in positive feedback from the students.