The regional round table has been held in Mykolaiv on February 15 within the framework of EU Industry Weeks and the national campaign “Youth and Industry 4.0“. The round table was organized by the Ukrainian Maritime Cluster with key partners: Business Support Center in Mykolaiv region, Industry 4.0 platform in Ukraine (Sustainable Industry Committee), APPAU Association.
The importance of gathering the round table by the Ukrainian Maritime Cluster is due to two aspects.
Firstly, Ukraine is running the “Youth and Industry 4.0” campaign, which includes the organization of seven regional round tables, accompanied by surveys of young people and employers.
Problems of youth labor migration, low qualification of students and personnel motivation are similar in the global, European as well as Ukrainian labor industry markets. However, our country has not appropriate state policies in order to overcome these problems. So, the main goals of the campaign are:
- To involve a wide range of industrialists and other stakeholders in addressing these challenges as threats at the national level.
- To achieve a common consensus on youth involvement, including addressing youth preparedness for the challenges of the dual digital and green transition.
- To establish a common long-term action plan for industrial sectors in response to these challenges.
Secondly, as the UMC mission is the facilitation of Ukrainian maritime economy, therefore staff training, exchange of best practices and coordination are the foundation of success. In view of this, representatives of state and international organizations in the field of education, leading maritime enterprises, industry associations, clusters and other structures were invited to the discussion.
Artem Vashchylenko, UMC Chairman of the Supervisory Board, addressed the guests of the round table with a welcoming and introductory speech. According to the speaker, nowadays preparing young people for the challenges of Industry 4.0 is one of the priority issues of the industrial agenda in the world, as evidenced by the World Industrial Forum. Also such problems as current challenges of high-tech enterprises in various industries, access of young people to new professions and lack of new personnel require attention.
Oleksandr Yurchak, General Director of the Association of Industrial Automation of Ukraine APPAU, opened the first block of the round table «Challenges of engagement and education youth for I4.0». The speaker presented the research Results of the Campaign “Youth & Industry 4.0”, outlined the challenges and ways to overcome them.
Then Prof. Dr. Eden Mamut, General Secretary of the Black Sea Universities Network was invited to the floor, whose report focused on the impact of the new IMO regulations regarding the “greening” of the shipping sector on the future professions in the field of shipbuilding and ship repair.
Katarzyna Romantovska-Jaskolska, the Director of the member-company of Polish Maritime Technology Forum and Managing Director of Damen Engineering Gdansk, shared her vision of the problem and solutions as a representative of the business environment. Her report was devoted to the Maritime Industry Academy Initiative: Enabling Business to meet Future Professionals.
The next speaker was Prof. Dr. Maria B. Lekakou the Dean of School of Bussiness Studies of the University of the Aegean, Prof. dock. Maria B. Lekakou, who outlined the innovative soft skills for maritime education.
At the end of the first block, the coordinator of the Marine Cluster of Bulgaria, Siyana Angelova, shared her experience of youth engagement in Blue Careers Days.
The second block of the round table was devoted to the best practices of youth engagement in the maritime industry. Representatives of innovative companies shared their successful experience in young people training, among them were:
Stanislav Seleznov, Head of Engineering Services of the “Marine Design Engineering Mykolayiv” with a report “Project NAVAIS: success in youth engagement and development in innovation 4.0”. In this report he presented the experiment of intern attracting from the Admiral Makarov National Shipbuilding University (NUOS) to participate in the NAVAIS (research grant project of European Union with innovative project of European Union NAVAIS on the 3DExperience platform) and the development of knowledge acquisition system.
Prof. Dr. Yuriy Zhukov, Co-founder of “C-Job Nikolayev” with the report “Youth and Shipbuilding 4.0 “, put attention to the experience of cooperation between the company and NUOS (including the unique training center).
PhD Ivan Simutenkov, Chief Technologist of Shipyard “Ocean”, made a report “Digital Shipyard: experience and challenges”. Among the aspects of the report were the experience of teaching young people, the use of software products, 4.0 technologies and ways to reduce the average age of personnel by 10 years.
Dmytro Kremez, Technical Solution Engineer of “Softprom” (Dassault Systems Official Representative in Ukraine) with a report “Skilled staff training for advanced technologies of Industry 4.0” explained how a shipbuilding company conceptualize its life cycle and digitalization process, best practices of academic programs translations and remodel them into training formats of modern platform developers. This does not replace academical education, but clearly provides a strong skills base for Specialist 4.0.
PhD Oleksii Zivenko, Co-founder of “AMICO Digital”, made a report ” Involvement and training of young professionals for complex engineering. Co-founder’s experience of the small industrial startup” on attracting young engineers from higher educational institutions and retaining staff from the outflow to IT.
The final speech of the block was a report of Doctor of Law Olesya Vashchuk, Chairman of the Council of Young Scientists at Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine about possibilities of the Councils of Young Scientists on the issues of involving young people in the challenges of the double digital and green transition.
The final part of the round table was the block “Generation of smart proposals”. Oleksandr Yurchak has opened it, providing EU recommendations and emphasizing the need to consolidate proposals, search for cross-sectoral synergy.
Volodymyr Yevseyev, Director of Innovation Cluster “RInnoHub” Innovation Cluster, has told about the creation of ecosystem for youth innovations and startups in the South of Ukraine.
In turn, PhD Tetiana Kotenko, Ph.D., Head of NCP of the program EU Horizon Europe on direction “EIC”, outlined the specifics of education funding in view of I4.0 context.
The Chairman of “Agency of South Region Development”, Prof. Dr. Vyacheslav Klochan also join the round table and described requirements to education and its transformation in view of I4.0 conditions.
Natalia Kutniak, Co-founder of the club of specialists in the field of personnel management – “HR Сlub Mykolaiv” in her report compared production and IT and answered the question “Why the Youth makes such choice?” from the standpoint of HR.
The final report “Industry 4.0 – the way to stop deindustrialization of Ukraine” was made by Pavlo Zaitsev, Director of IT Association «East-Ukrainian Technocluster».
Use the link to download presentations of the round table participants: Youth and Industry 4.0.