Industry 4.0 Skills for Manufacturing Technicians: Adjusting Engineering Technology Programs to Respond to Industry Identified Skills

The National Science Foundation project Updating Florida's ET Career Pathways for Industry 4.0 Engagement was concluded on December 31, 2025 and its final report submitted in March 2026.  This project was led by FLATE (PI, Dr. Marilyn Barger). FLATE, a former NSF-ATE-supported Center for 20 years, is now part of FloridaMakes, the Florida Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP). The U.S. MEP program is supported by the Department of Commerce. 

The grant was awarded in March 2022 to update the A.S. Engineering Technology program to include Industry 4.0 skills identified in a previous small conference grant (Future of Work Caucus) which brought Florida industries and educators together to define needed emerging manufacturing technician skills.

The grant had four highly active co-PIs: Sam Ajlani, College of Central Florida, Dr. Ron Eaglin, Daytona State College, Dr. Mori Toosi, Polk State College, and Dr. Sidney Martin, St. Petersburg College. They enthusiastically promoted engagement from twenty Florida College System colleges offering Engineering Technology in all aspects of this work. Additional recognition for their contributions goes to Dr. Jay Patterson and Susan Frandsen of St. Johns River College, and Shirley Dobbins of Hillsborough College.

This grant has successfully executed its grant-stated goals, promoted national awareness of Florida’s 2-year Engineering Technology degree program, and allocated its resources to support their continued success. The project had several goal areas with significant outcomes. 

The first goal was to determine the specific Industry 4.0 skills needed by the manufacturing industry in Florida. This goal required reviewing recent industry survey responses by having the 2-year college faculty who teach these skills review the responses, identify those that they already cover in some courses, and determine which of the industry responses were most important in their region. These data were collected from the twenty Florida Colleges that offer Engineering Technology A.S. degree programs and aggregated and analyzed. The outcomes included skills related to data (e.g., logging, visualization and interpretation) industrial networking and practical knowledge of cybersecurity hygiene. These topics would be included in a revision of the state level curriculum frameworks for the AS Engineering Technology degree. These frameworks do not define specific courses, but rather the skills that students must become proficient in (they can be taught in any appropriate course using new modules or units). The new standards were written by grant personnel, approved by the colleges and submitted to, and approved by the Florida Department of Career and Adult Education. College faculty are identifying which courses in their programs will include these topics and are developing appropriate curriculum modules. Important outcomes of this process: that it included all stakeholders, had a high level of participation throughout, and the collaborative nature of the work.

A second goal area focused on providing professional development for those faculty that need it for teaching the new skills needed. FLATE partners with Florida ET faculty, ATE experts and industry partners to provide educator professional development. It also leverages equipment at various college partners. For this project, FLATE hosted the NYcTE National Center for 2 workshops (Cybersecurity for Manufacturing and Implications of AI for Education). We also engaged with the Manufacturing Technology Deployment Group (MTDG) and FloridaMakes to develop tools for teaching and implementing edge computing capabilities in the 2-year Engineering Technology programs. With that foundation, we extended the edge computing workshop to shift to a smaller and more affordable microcontroller (Raspberry Pi) platform. Additionally, a small cohort of faculty worked through a series of five in-person workshops to upgrade their programmable logic controller programming skills. All the workshops above involved hands-on training. These hands-on workshops were complemented with several in-person and virtual technical webinars, presentations and demonstrations during the grant period.

This project’s third major goal area was to engage more industry partners with the colleges across the state. We did this by standing up a statewide industry advisory board (SETIAB – Statewide Engineering Technology Industrial Advisory Board) with the approval of the Florida Department of Education and a small industry focus group drawn from college local advisory boards. This small group developed a draft of the state board’s mission and operating “charter”. Industry members were recruited from local program advisory boards. The SETIAB meets in conjunction with the bi-annual Engineering Technology Forum (ET Forum) meetings. It convenes ET college faculty, program coordinators, vendors, and industry at different colleges around the state. A new SETIAB website highlights members of the SETIAB (https://fl-ate.org/setiab/). It is hoped that the SETIAB will elevate industry’s awareness of the ET program and encourage more manufacturers to engage with their local college program and this statewide advisory board.

To share the project’s work, the team engaged in many outreach and dissemination activities. These included several referred conference proceeding papers, presentations and posters at conferences including the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), High Impact Technology Exchange (HITEC), the NSF ATE PI, Florida Association of Career and Technical Education (FACTE), the Florida Career Pathways Network (FCPN) and others. The project also produced videos highlighting the new curriculum, faculty, the ET colleges and the SETIAB. Presentations, papers, workshop materials, and posters are available at https://fl-ate.org/updating-floridas-et-pathways/ and the video series at https://flate-grant-spotlight.lovable.app/.