A Gap Study Between Employers’ Expectations in Thailand and Current Competence of Master’s Degree Students in Industrial Engineering under Industry 4.0

Abstract Industry 4.0 is an era in which the manufacturing industry has adopted digital technologies and the Internet to enable smart manufacturing system, machines used in the production now can communicate with each other and exchange information between each other, and the machinery used in the manufacturing process is more modern and precise. Therefore, educational institutions should develop the curriculum to produce qualified graduates with the knowledge required for the Industry 4.0 era, especially Industrial Engineering graduates who are directly related to the industry sector. The purpose of this research is to collect the data for the Master of Industrial Engineering (MSIE) curriculum development. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique is used to rank the indicators of knowledge that is important to the employment of graduates with a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering, and study the gap between the expectations of employers and the ability of the current MSIE students of Khon Kaen University. The results of the study reveal that the first indicators that are most important to the employment of MSIE graduates is the knowledge of Industry 4.0 strategy and the knowledge that the students should have developed are the collaboration of humans and robots, big data analytics, real time data usage and databased decision making.