Biologicalisation in learning factories - Learning concept and lab-demonstrator for bio-fluids for metal processing

New technologies and concepts are continuously introduced in production engineering to get closer to the goal of sustainability. However, the skill development in engineering is often connected to a delay in taking these developments into account. It is therefore important to recognize emerging trends and technologies at an early stage and to include them into engineering education. Currently, one emerging topic is the biologicalisation of production processes. This involves the integration of biological components into industrial manufacturing systems. This paper addresses the question of how engineers can be trained in this topic and how competencies can be built up. A particular field, in which biologicalisation can be applied, is the development and testing of new cutting fluids and lubricants. In this concept, students can be introduced to the technology field of biologicalisation in an application-oriented way. For that purpose, a biologicalisation framework for production engineering is presented together with a practical, lab-scale learning station. This allows students to develop their own bio-integrated metal working fluid (MWF) concept and test its functionality as well as long-term stability. Real-time data acquisition enables the students to identify and implement improvement measures and experience the challenges as well as potentials of biologicalisation.