DRIVES – Development and Research on Innovative Vocational Education Skills – for the automotive industry launched in Ostrava
Date
02 Mar 2018
Sections
Transport
Ostrava, 1 st – 2nd March 2018 – ETRMA was proud to attend the launch event of the DRIVES Project, together with all 24 project partners and at the presence of the Minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, Tomáš Hüner, and the Rector of the Technical University of Ostrava, Václav Snášel. European Commissioner for internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, Elżbieta Bieńkowska, also sent a video message to express her support to the project.
The tyre and rubber sector, and the entire automotive value chain, is undergoing a massive transformation both through a shift of business model, towards mobility as a service, and through several drivers of change: connected and automated driving, advanced materials, decarbonisation of transport, circular economy etc.
The European Skills Council for the Automotive Industry had already identified skills gaps as our workforce is aging and is in need both of upskilling and to attract new talents, often with skills that have not been traditionally linked to the automotive sector.
Picking up from the introduction made by Commissioner Bieńkowska, Mrs Cinaralp, Secretary General of ETRMA, concluded: “Indeed, the industry needs a workforce with the right skills to make these changes possible. This is also true for the tyre & rubber industry, which continously innovates its products and materials and needs to access the right skills to continue being a key enabler for these changes to come”.
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Note to the editor:
For more information on DRIVES, please visit: http://www.etrma.org/activities/the-skills-challenge/drives;
A detailed summary of the project can also be found here: http://www.etrma.org/uploads/Modules/Documentsmanager/drives_visual-final2.pdf ;
The press release of the consortium is available here: http://www.etrma.org/uploads/Modules/Newsroom/20180301-drives-pressrelease_final.pdf
A website for the project will soon be live at this link: http://www.project-drives.eu
The Development and Research on Innovative Vocational Educational Skills project (DRIVES) is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union under the agreement 591988-EPP-1-2017-1-CZ-EPPKA2-SSA-B.
The European tyre and rubber industry employs directly more than 360 000 people with a turnover of €73B in 2016, which constitutes about half a point of the EU turnover. ETRMA’s membership include the following tyre manufacturers: APOLLO VREDESTEIN, BRIDGESTONE EUROPE, BRISA, COOPER TIRES, CONTINENTAL, GOODYEAR DUNLOP TIRES EUROPE, HANKOOK, MARANGONI, MICHELIN, NOKIAN TYRES, PIRELLI TYRE, PROMETEON Tyre S.r.l., and TRELLEBORG WHEEL SYSTEMS. Associations in the following countries are also members of ETRMA: Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK.