ABAKOS - Development of battery competence Saarland

Duration: 10/2023 to 09/2028

Project website

Project background:

The automotive industry is a key economic factor in Saarland, which means that the transition to electrified individual mobility has a particularly strong impact on the situation of employees and companies in the region. In order to successfully manage this transformation, companies need a qualified workforce along the entire value chain of the drive battery ecosystem.

The consortium, consisting of the organizations: Festo Lernzentrum GmbH, Cluster Autoregion e.V., Ford Werke GmbH, SVOLT Energy Technology (Europe) GmbH, Woll Maschinenbau GmbH, Saarland University and Saarland University of Applied Sciences have joined forces in the ABAKOS project to establish qualification and further training measures along the entire life cycle of traction batteries,

Project objective:

The aim of the project is to develop needs-based qualification and further training measures for all phases of the traction battery life cycle.

To this end, a network of stakeholders will be established along the entire life cycle, comprising innovative partners from the automotive industry cluster, public and private educational institutions and university representatives in the fields of production, automation technology, digitalization, materials science, cell chemistry and automotive logistics. This network will identify the necessary skills together with the companies concerned. The Saarland's strong focus on medium-sized industry requires the special involvement of SMEs at this point.

The partners will develop the necessary industry-specific skills profiles, provide them with learning objectives and describe training and further education paths based on them. The competence profiles will be developed taking into account the relevant aspects of the regional value chain and the regionally relevant phases of the product life cycle. In addition to the activities to build up manufacturing expertise, sustainability aspects are also explicitly addressed.

At the same time, personnel transitions resulting from this structural change will be identified and compared with the skills profiles developed. In the context of the project, personnel transitions describe changes in personnel assignments and personnel resources within companies and organizations. This refers to the identification and consideration of changes in the tasks, responsibilities or positions of employees resulting from structural change.

The core of the project is the subsequent development of qualification measures that are adapted to the special requirements and tasks of battery cell production and its peripheral processes. These measures will first be implemented and tested as a pilot in the project before they are effectively offered on a large scale.

Funding information:
The ABAKOS project is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and supervised by the VDI/VDE-IT project management organization.