On February 15, we presented in Milan in front of the top management of UniCredit Italia the projects carried out with the support of Fondazione Cariverona. The event was an opportunity to verify the great potential of the meeting between the world of technical education and Made in Italy companies. On this point we offer the reflection of Stefano Micelli, president of Upskill 4.0, written after the presentation.
"His name is Edward. In his hand is a welder's mask. It is not just any mask. It is a prototype that he, along with a working group of students fromITS Maker in Modena, has developed to make it easier to weld the tubes that make up the frames of special bicycles. Very special. Pietro Pietricola, the frame maker who today continues the great tradition of Dario Pegoretti, makes custom bicycles for customers from all over the world. These are steel bicycles that reflect the taste and ability of very different customers. When in Upskill 4.0 we started thinking about how to help Pegoretti make a leap in quality without compromising the craftsmanship of the product, Pietro had asked for a kind of "cruise control" to weld in peace, without always having to keep in mind the many parameters that make frame welding so complicated. The jig that Edward is holding does a bit of this. As the welder proceeds with the torch, the essential parameters of steel thickness and energy intensity appear on the mask as an overlay. The mask supports a high-tech craftsmanship that relaunches the way the Dario Pegoretti brand presents itself to its customers. Not only that. It is also a way to engage young people with respect to a job, that of the welder, otherwise perceived as unattractive.
The Modena students' prototype and Pietro Pietricola's look of satisfaction are a sense of what we do at Upskill 4.0. We try to bring together the energy of young people with advanced technical training and businesses need today for solutions to the 4.0 transformation of work. We have done the same with Progetto Quid in Verona (a social cooperative that produces accessories using materials that big brands have decided to discard), with Coplant (a nursery in Canneto sull'Oglio that aims to create a new culture of plants), with Reverse (to use second raw materials in the construction of furniture). The results of the pathways we presented a few days ago at Unicredit in Milan with funding from Cariverona Foundation confirm the potential for virtuous short-circuits between training and innovation.
The projects initiated by Upskill 4.0 all have the same ambition: to give technological quality to businesses that aim to host good jobs and strengthen ties within a community. We don't have much time to rethink a large slice of our Made in Italy. So many factors (demographics, educational paths, attractiveness of territories) challenge the sustainability of so many economic realities that are a cultural as well as an economic heritage of the country. The projects presented in Milan tell us that investing in young people is the best way to avoid decline."