Accenture & Purdue Build Online Smart Manufacturing Academy

Purdue University in collaboration with industry leader Accenture has created an online smart manufacturing education program for organisations looking to enhance employee skill sets. This comes after Purdue partnered with PTC to enhance their ambition of being the first American University to offer a degree in Manufacturing, collaborating to design and build a learning smart factory.

Purdue's Smart Manufacturing Academy, made available to industry associations and businesses, is geared around teaching foundational digital transformation knowledge to manufacturing professionals, including technicians, plant managers, engineers, and machine and line operators.

The program is structured asynchronously, enabling employees to engage with course materials at a time, location and pace that suits them.

The content of this course is tailored in its organisation and distribution to learners based on their role in the manufacturing industry.

The 15 hours of material are delivered in the format of infographics, videos, interactive tutorials and other learning aids, aiming to deliver thorough education engagingly and memorably. 

Completing modules and surpassing specific learning milestones are rewarded with digital badges and micro-credentials to indicate learners have acquired new knowledge and skills.

This process is not only satisfying to the learners, signifying their progression and improvement but also serves to bolster their current and future employability. 

Accenture has had significant involvement in this process. Prasad Satyavolu, a managing director in Accenture’s digital engineering and manufacturing service, Industry X, has played a vital role in shaping the Smart Manufacturing Academy.

“As we help our clients reinvent manufacturing and build new facilities in North America, we see time and time again how important it is to take the workforce along the journey,” says Prasad.

“For this purpose, we aim to empower the Smart Manufacturing Academy with Accenture LearnVantage learning content for digital engineering and manufacturing.

"The academy will provide proven know-how, peer experiences and real-life examples to workers and their managers.

"This learning experience will equip them with critical skills and help turn technology sceptics into active participants in the digital manufacturing reinvention.” 

The Smart Manufacturing Academy adds to the ongoing collaboration between Purdue and Accenture that began in 2022. This partnership included a smart manufacturing scholarship program at Purdue University alongside facilities and support for smart manufacturing research and teaching.

“Purdue’s persistent pursuit of innovation is on prominent display within the Smart Manufacturing Academy,” adds Diana Hancock, associate vice president of educational partnerships in Purdue’s Office of Industry Partnerships. 

“This dynamic education package is poised to make a mark on the upskilling landscape for frontline manufacturing operators, supervisors and technical experts.” 

Purdue has also been working with Conexus Indiana, a non-profit organisation of member manufacturers interested in strengthening Indiana’s competitive advantage in advanced manufacturing.

Conexus is promoting the Smart Manufacturing Academy to its members, as Pursue increases its investment in Indiana, planning to inaugurate its first comprehensive urban campus there on the 27th of June.

“Purdue’s Smart Manufacturing Academy fills a critical need for the sector as more and more Indiana manufacturers come to realise that digital skills are the foundation of success for a more productive, competitive future,” comments Fred Cartwright, president and CEO of Conexus Indiana. 

“The academy’s virtual, industry-derived training helps local manufacturers upskill essential on-the-floor talent while explaining the ‘why’ behind the adoption of digital tools to help change workforce behaviours in favour of digitisation.”

The collaboration between Accenture and Purdue which has led to the Smart Manufacturing Academy grew out of the critical need to address the hiring gap in manufacturing. In the US alone, an anticipated 4.6 million manufacturing jobs need to be filled by 2025 and solutions must be provided to reskill existing employees. 

“The anywhere, anytime online format makes these courses easily accessible for our partners in businesses and industries across the country and around Indiana who need options for upskilling employees and grounding their organizations in digital skills that are central to the future of manufacturing,” says Dimitrios Peroulis, senior vice president for Purdue University Online.

Purdue continues to work with Accenture and other engineering, industry and technology partners to promote the Smart Manufacturing Academy and engage employers to get their teams involved in the program.

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