PECA will spread knowledge to the industry

KTH starts a knowledge bank with content that can be used by professional educators to put together corporate training. This way, Swedish industry will be able to offer its employees technical educations, tailor-made for the company’s needs.

The new requirements that come with digitalization and automation has become an obstacle for companies’ ability to grow and be competitive.

Companies not only have trouble finding people with the right skills, the existing workforce needs additional training.

With a new education concept called PECA (Professional Education Content Alliance), KTH and the Innovation Program PiiA, are about to launch a pilot project aimed to educate the Swedish process industry in the field of cyber security. The project is also supported by Vinnova.

“KTH has a lot of knowledge in the field, but sometimes it’s difficult to quickly implement it where it’s needed. The industry would rather have tailor-made education for its staff than academic courses that generate points”, says Tobias Vahlne, business developer at Machine design at KTH.

The idea behind the Peca concept is a framework where KTH, but also companies, will be able to deliver content to a knowledge hub that can then be used by various educators. The framework is based on an open source model controlling how the content is being used. In the pilot project, SkillEd, a business area within Kunskapsskolan group, will be the professional educator that along with KTH will form the first trainings.

“By joining the alliance through licensing agreements, other educators can create educational packages that fit their tools, customers or methods. It might be HR departments or professional training companies. This way, more people can access KTH knowledge, even though SkillEd is the official provider of the content. Most important is that the knowledge is available, lifelong learning is part of KTH’s mission,” says Tobias Vahlne.

The pilot project is carried out during 2020 and involves at least ten companies. Saab and Rockwell Automation have already shown interest in the three topics that will be offered within the project: Artificial Intelligence, Edge Computing and General Security. The courses will be available on different levels: from mobile apps to teaching in a classroom.

Some companies have their own concepts for internal training, but Tobias Vahlne explains why many of them would like to share their knowledge:

”It’s marketing. In the right context such participation can be a boost for the brand.”