The rapid development of digital technologies, commonly known as Industry 4.0 or I40, is creating a challenge for higher education institutions to catch up and integrate them into their academic program for engineering degrees. This challenge is two-pronged: first, teaching future engineers to identify what I40 technologies are, their scope and their limitations, and how they should be integrated into the business models. Given the disciplinary background of each engineering program, students see, design, and implement technology solely from their disciplinary point of view. Finally, most of the engineers design and make their technology projects with students of the same field with no contact or input from other than the professor or the client. Collaboration is nowhere to be found.

This paper describes a multidisciplinary, I40-oriented project to increase collaboration skills among engineering students, obtain a holistic view of Industry 4.0 ecosystem, and develop a clear, fact-based understanding of the organization needs. A group of 25 senior engineering students, from six different engineering program, worked in a project to assess the readiness level in Industry 4.0 of a Tier II manufacturing company. The company wanted to have an strategic roadmap to implement I40 technology to respond faster to customer information requirements. This five-week project was focused on the machining process where shop floor equipment, process, personnel and management processes were evaluated using the Smart Industry Readiness Index (SIRI) model. Multidisciplinary teams were created, each with a specific area to assess. An integrated assessment and roadmap was generated to provide a roadmap to use cloud-computing, Internet of Things (IoT), systems integration and data analytics technologies to enhance their information system as a competitive advantage.

An initial diagnostic showed that indeed engineering students have very technology-sided views of Industry 4.0, little or none understanding of the processes impact upon technology selection, and a disproportionately optimistic view of the technology benefits. The course content included strategic planning, industry 4.0 ecosystem, SIRI model and assessment. Teams dedicated more than 60 hours to shop floor visits, remote interviews, document analysis guided by three IE professors and three experts on I40 technologies.

The results shown that collaboration happens organically among engineering students and triggered by the need to contribute with their expertise on the technologies and/or methodologies. Mechanical and mechatronics students contribute with their expertise on IoT and automation, industrial engineering students facilitate project management and system approach and food industry and bio students helped with research acumen to find suitable technologies for the organization needs and constraints. An integrated presentation of a five-year strategic roadmap to enhance information flows using I40 technologies was the pinnacle of engineering collaboration for these students. These results led to a innovation-sponsored-project to design and operate a cloud-based digital app to assess companies readiness in Industry 4.0 by multidisciplinary teams of engnieering students.

Keywords: Industry 4.0 assessment, educational innovation, higher education, collaboration, multidisciplinary.