European Initiative on CDIO in Raw Material Programmes

One of five Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs), was launched in Europe in 2014 and has focus on exploration, extraction, mineral processing, metallurgy, recycling and material substitution of Raw Materials. To reach the vision, where the European Union’s industrial strength is based on a cost-efficient, secure, sustainable supply and use of raw materials, a new generation of skilled people entering industry, universities and research needs to be developed. A special focus within the KIC is on stimulating education activities and foster new ways of learning and teaching.

Today’s technical MSc graduates in raw materials and especially primary resources (i.e. exploration, extraction, mining and mineral processing and metallurgy) best suites large companies where they often act as specialists, experts etc. For small to medium enterprises as well as for our future engineers other skills than technical are necessary and warranted in order to be productive and cooperative from the first day. As a part of the KIC Raw Materials and as an approved education project, the implementation of CDIO in primary resource linked programmes started in 2016. The project focuses, during 2016-2017, on (WP1) faculty- and (WP2) pilot case development and the contributing partners are from academia, industry and research institutes. In the WP1, Chalmers University of Technology, University of Limerick, Luleå University of Technology, Clausthal University of Technology , Universidad Politécnica Madrid and TU Delft together with other CDIO experts will arrange international and national courses, workshops and inspiration lectures for faculty and industry partners within the area of exploration, mining, mineral processing and metallurgy. The first pilot case in WP2 will focus on a MSc mining programme and be developed at LTU during 2016 by personal support and coaching by CDIO experts as well as great involvement by the mining company LKAB. Universidad Politécnica Madrid and TU Clausthal are going to be followed in 2017.

None in Europe has yet applied CDIO for raw material related MSc programmes. This paper describes and discuss the difference between product related (mechanical and design) and raw material (exploration, mining and mineral processing) programmes, requirements for future graduates within the field, but also other issues such as the scale of the design object and the time to implement a process or product in the mining sector. This paper presents the opportunities and key outputs with implementing CDIO in mining and metallurgy related programmes. This paper will also discuss future ideas on implementing CDIO in Raw Materials.

Proceedings of the 13th International CDIO Conference in Calgary, Canada, June 18-22 2017