Siemens today signed a memorandum of understanding on strategic collaboration with the Department of Human Resource and Social Security of Sichuan province at the Sichuan Vocational Education Forum, which was co-hosted by the two parties. Both pledged to launch comprehensive collaboration in vocational skill improvement and education by learning from Germany’s advanced vocational education models and practices, and drawing on Siemens’ rich experience in vocational education, in an effort to facilitate Sichuan in its journey towards educational reform and innovation, and provide technological and talent support for the province’s industrial transformation and upgrading

“Sichuan is an important intelligent manufacturing center in China. Building digital talent is the key to its transformation from traditional manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing, to the optimization of industrial structure and to the construction of advantageous industrial clusters, which is the strategic support for reshaping the manufacturing industry,” said Shang Huijie, Senior Vice President of Siemens Ltd. China and General Manager of Region South and West China. “With our strong expertise in global industrial automation and digitalization and our rich experience in vocational education and training, Siemens will work even more closely with Sichuan in integrating industry and education and focus on producing innovative and technological talent to meet local manufacturing industry’s demand for high-quality development.”

Under the agreement, Siemens and the department will jointly hold the Selective Session of WorldSkills Competition in Sichuan focusing on setting up pilot projects in the field of industrial control and Industrial 4.0 and improving the new generation’s overall engineering ability, aiming to use the competition as an incentive to promote vocational education and training. In the meantime, both parties will initiate the Siemens Educational Cooperation Project, under which Siemens will work with local universities and colleges to build intelligent manufacturing engineering and application centers, engineering training demonstration centers and certification and training centers as part of an effort to establish high-quality vocational education platforms in Sichuan. In addition, Siemens is committed to helping partner universities and colleges flesh out their vocational education professional construction, strengthen the soft power of their faculty teams and promote educational reform by optimizing curriculum planning and teacher training.

Siemens has long dedicated itself to producing future-proof high-quality technological and engineering talent in the digital age, and promoting vocational education development and industrial transformation and upgrading in different parts of China. For example, as one of Siemens’ key educational collaborative projects with the Ministry of Education of China, since the Siemens Cup China Intelligent Manufacturing Challenge competition was first held in 2006, aimed at finding competent technological and innovative talent for China’s intelligent manufacturing development, it has attracted nearly 100,000 students from 800 schools and has produced for China tens of thousands of individuals highly skilled in innovation-driven engineering in the process of industrial transformation and upgrading.

In addition, Siemens has expanded its educational cooperation projects in China in the form of co-establishing laboratories with local universities and colleges, training teachers, publishing textbooks and organizing competitions. In May 2016 Siemens signed a new memorandum of understanding on education with the Ministry of Education of China to train innovative talent for the country’s industrial transformation and upgrading in the framework of Sino-Germany collaboration. Siemens together with Chinese universities and colleges have built more than 400 laboratories, trained more than 4,000 practicing teachers and published more than 50 engineering textbooks in China.