DigiPro: Digitalization programme for the process industry

Target groups include: Managers, project managers and skilled/production workers from Elkem, Eramet, Jotun, Hydro and Boliden.

The Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skillsannounced funding in autumn of 2021 for competence building within vulnerable industrial clusters. DigiPro applied and received funding late 2021 for development of competence-building courses (EVU) for digitalization of the process industry.

The project is a collaboration between the universities and research institutions NTNU, SINTEF, UiA and USN, and the companies Boliden, Hydro, Jotun, Elkem and Eramet. The project is led by USN.

The industrial companies emphasized areas such as technology management, cyber security, and data analysis as the most important areas for skills development. Based on this specification will four courses be developed and implemented in this project, three basic courses in the desired areas for skills development, and an overview course named «Digitalization of the process industry». The overview course is intended to be a course where the candidates can combine the competence from any of the basic courses, based on real challenges within their own companies. The knowledge from the basic courses, together with supervising from the staff at the universities and research institutions, the candidate will make a report documenting valuable solution(s) for the company.

These courses prototypes and are free of charge for workers from Elkem, Eramet, Jotun, Hydro and Boliden.

We will at a later time offer these and other courses to all industrial companies at regular costs.