Serge Tichkiewitch

EU Project SafEUr - Competence Requirements for Functional Safety Managers

Functional Safety has become a vital property of many products and systems. There is a clear trend to move safety functions from pure mechanics into electronic control units. Therefore over the recent years, various standards have evolved describing the properties and certification criteria of safety-critical electronically controlled products and systems. In order for a particular product to be adapted to the requirements of different target markets, the integration of functional safety considerations according to the relevant standards into the complete product creation processes and organisations is essential. This integration requires special competencies that define the new job role of a Functional Safety Manager. This article gives an overview of these competency requirements in the context of the documentation of the first results, the targets, and the scope of the EU project SafEUr, which aims at putting in place a Europe-wide on-line training and certification program for functional safety managers according to the requirements of several industry sectors, as well as the experiences from research and practical safety engineering projects.

Integrating Functional Safety, Automotive SPICE and Six Sigma - The AQUA Knowledge Base and Integration Examples

AQUA stands for Knowledge Alliance for Training Quality and Excellence in Automotive. The AQUA project is financially supported by the European Commission in the Leonardo da Vinci part of the Lifelong Learning Programme under the project number EAC-2012-0635. This paper extends the EuroSPI 2013 publication [4] which discussed (based on the EU project AQUA) how the core elements of three complementary approaches (Automotive SPICE, Functional safety, Six Sigma) and standards can be integrated into one compact skill set with training and best practices to be applied. In this paper we describe the modular knowledge base which was elaborated and highlight some aspects where the integrated use of all three methods can be demonstrated. The results of the project are disseminated to Automotive industry in partnership with a set of European Automotive associations.

Implementing Functional Safety Standards - Experiences from the Trials about Required Knowledge and Competencies (SafEUr)

In the EU project SafEUr (518632-LLP-1-2011-1-AT-LEONARDO-LMP) the partnership developed a skill set with learning objectives, training materials, and tools to teach and coach the implementation of IEC 61508 and ISO 26262. Automotive, Medical, and Nuclear industry gave inputs to the project. A group of above 20 multinational companies (SOQRATES www.soqrates.de) which also are active in automotive industry (some of them represent the largest suppliers in Automotive industry) organised reviews and trial courses with safety managers. This led to a defined set of skills and tools we expect from functional safety managers and functional safety engineers. In this paper we describe the results of SafEUr, the feedback we received from the collaboration with leading automotive industry and the next steps in 2013 to launch this schema with official certificates from end of 2013 onwards.

Automotive Quality Universities - AQUA Alliance Extension to Higher Education

This paper discusses the extension of AQUA (Automotive Knowledge Alliance AQUA – Integrating Automotive SPICE, Six Sigma, and Functional Safety) into the higher education studies. Follow-up project Automotive quality universities (AQU) aims to the adaptation of the AQUA integrated concept to the universities ECTS granted courses. The goal is to bridge the knowledge gap between the automotive industry needs and graduates capabilities in the area of Automotive SPICE, Functional Safety and Six Sigma. The integrated concept of AQU and AQUA complex approach to the education of graduates and engineers to enhance the knowledge in this area is described.

Empowering Entrepreneurship in Europe: Going from the Idea to Enterprise in 4 EU Countries

Innovation and entrepreneurship are among the top priority areas of the European Union in order to exit the economical crisis and assure sustainable and profitable growth and competitiveness on a global level. Although more and more entrepreneurship training and education programs exist in different EU countries, there is little cross-country cooperation and complementary among these activities. This paper introduces a European approach to a certified entrepreneurship training program that has been established in a consortium of several European training and education organisations. This program has been implemented around the long-term mission of empowering people to make ideas become real in the European context.

Fostering Innovation and Entrepreneurship in European VET: EU Project “From Idea to Enterprise”

The research and development of modern products and systems is coined by the increasingly important requirement to create sustainable innovation. Innovation is intimately linked with entrepreneurship. Ideas, Innovation and Entrepreneurship are considered the keys to a wealthy and sustainable economy. The best way to turn ideas into innovations is to consider key innovation factors from the earliest phases of research all along the way to products and services. Existing entrepreneurship education and training programs, however, do not take into account these early phases, but rather focus on the process of creating a new enterprise. This paper presents “From Idea to Enterprise”, a European Project that transfers the innovative “ECQA Certified EU Researcher-Entrepreneur” certified program from academic to VET level.

Method and Tools for the Effective Knowledge Management in Product Life Cycle

The analysis of the factors linked to the life cycle of a product shows the need of the integration of the actors acting in this cycle and of their different cultures. For such integration, the concurrent engineering has to use a multi-view cooperative integrated design modeller taking into account a product model and an activity model. This modeller must be linked with a knowledge management system. This chapter presents three examples of industrial application of integrated design in the sectors of automotive, metallurgy and wood furniture’s.

European Qualification and Certification for the Lifelong Learning

We have presented three different programs of qualification and certification of competences in the area of modern product development, which comply with a European standard. The AIP-PRIMECA community is invited to participate in these programs as trainers or students, as well as dissemination partner. Based on the schema presented above, we envisage new professions and corresponding trainings and certifications created and supported by EMIRAcle and AIP-PRIMECA together. Joining efforts of these networks has a unique potential of disseminating an international training and certification scheme for modern job roles in product development in France with strong links to international communities.

Qualification and Certification of Research-Entrepreneur Skills Using the ECQA Platform

The paper presents a specific approach for defining a new job role so call Research-Entrepreneur that have to be trained and certified at the European level. These processes are supported by an e-learning platform developed by the European Certification and Qualification Association in the last ten years. After a brief description of the Research-Entrepreneur skill card definition there are presented the skills acquisition within the platform, the methodology of the skill sets provision and the qualification and certification procedures. Also, the link with a national e-learning platform in the same field is described.

Case-Based Reasoning for Adaptive Aluminum Extrusion Die Design Together with Parameters by Neural Networks

Nowadays Aluminum extrusion die design is a critical task for improving productivity which involves with quality, time and cost. Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) method has been successfully applied to support the die design process in order to design a new die by tackling previous problems together with their solutions to match with a new similar problem. Such solutions are selected and modified to solve the present problem. However, the applications of the CBR are useful only retrieving previous features whereas the critical parameters are missing. In additions, the experience learning to such parameters are limited. This chapter proposes Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to associate the CBR in order to learning previous parameters and predict to the new die design according to the primitive die modification. The most satisfactory is to accommodate the optimal parameters of extrusion processes.