Published 9/13/2018

Yaskawa Motoman, RAMTEC Enter Educational Partnership

This partnership will support the State of Ohio in creating a highly sustainable workforce development model and will provide Ohio educators and students with STEM-aligned curricula and training in order to become proficient in Industry 4.0 technologies.

Edited by: MMS Editorial Team

Yaskawa Motoman and the Robotics & Advanced Manufacturing Technology Education Collaborative (RAMTEC; Marion, Ohio) have announced the formation of the Ohio Manufacturing Workforce Partnership. This strategic partnership is intended to support the State of Ohio in creating a highly sustainable workforce development model and will provide Ohio educators and students with STEM-aligned curricula and training in order to become proficient in Industry 4.0 technologies.

Yaskawa Motoman is dedicated to collaborating closely with educators and industry professionals across the Americas to help build a relevant workforce training environment through educational tools and STEM curriculum. RAMTEC is a trusted accreditor of both high school and adult robotics manufacturing licensures and certifications that seeks to create sustainable solutions for filling Ohio’s robotics and advanced manufacturing skills gap.

RAMTEC’s core mission to partner with manufacturing facilities to help identify and supply the needs of the industry is fueling its involvement in the partnership. The entire project development funding is earmarked for $400,000 to provide a comprehensive training and application development model that will reach thousands of incumbent workers and students statewide.

“Our workforce-driven training and research partnership with RAMTEC is a solid step to providing students with work-based learning opportunities in the field of robotics,” says Doug Burnside, Yaskawa Motoman’s vice president of sales and marketing. “The best-in-class instruction and certification programs provided through our Yaskawa Academy will also help to enhance RAMTEC’s vision of providing proficient training and curriculum in 21st-century automation and robotics.”

Highlights of the partnership will include the creation of in-lab and classroom instructional strategies, the development of advanced industry-recognized robotics certifications, the utilization of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies to develop a new class of training tools and curriculum, and the incorporation of industry-utilized robotic equipment aligned to the industrial manufacturing base.

The on-going identification and creation of new training models to support the robotics manufacturing pipeline will also continue.

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