On August 10–11 Austrian members of the FactoRIS consortium visited the STUBA learning factory. On the first day they were presented the infrastructure of the Laboratory of Maintenance and Industrial Automation, then the neighboring workshops of the STUBA Green Team – a student team constructing and racing their own, both human-driven and driverless formula cars – as well as the high-end Laboratory of Nanodiagnostics. The afternoon was devoted to the introduction of particular testbeds of the STUBA learning factory, technical discussions and drafting of the associated digital learning nuggets. On the second day we visited the STUBA’s National Centre of Robotics with a demonstration of interesting research projects on AGVs, industrial and collaborative robotics. This was followed by a visit to a local company ME-Inspection SK who is a member of the Micro-Epsilon group, an alliance of medium-sized companies that work with sensor technologies. ME-Inspection SK excels in measuring geometric factors at the micrometer level, measuring mass and force effects, and checking materials’ surfaces, and all this with overall integration into the manufacturing process, primarily in the rubber and automotive industries. During the guided tour we also had a chance to discuss various aspects and challenges of digital transformation from the perspective of SMEs.
