Enhancing manufacturing processes through control education with MIT FrED platform

The transition toward advanced and digitalized manufacturing requires engineers and technicians who can connect control-theory concepts with the practical implementation, validation, and troubleshooting of feedback systems. However, control education and industrial training often address modeling, simulation, controller design, and hardware implementation as separate activities, limiting learners’ opportunities to experience the complete control-engineering workflow within a realistic manufacturing context. To address this gap, this paper presents an educational and industrial training framework based on the Fiber Extrusion Device (FrED), developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and structured according to the V-model. The framework integrates (1) process analysis and performance specification, (2) modeling and system identification, (3) controller design and simulation, (4) hardware implementation, and (5) results evaluation and discussion. The main contribution is a reusable V-model-based learning framework that integrates the complete control-engineering workflow within a single manufacturing-oriented physical platform, bridging theoretical analysis, experimental implementation, and performance evaluation for both academic education and industrial workforce training. The FrED spooler subsystem is employed as a representative case study, in which learners acquire experimental data, identify dynamic models, design PI and PID controllers, validate their behavior through simulation, implement them on the physical platform, and compare simulated and experimental responses. The results demonstrate the feasibility of implementing the complete workflow on the platform and illustrate how differences between model predictions and experimental behavior can be incorporated into learning activities. Beyond the specific FrED implementation, these findings show the potential of structuring physical engineering platforms around the complete control-engineering workflow for education and industrial training. This approach provides a basis for extending the proposed framework to other FrED subsystems and for developing similar educational workflows using other physical platforms and engineering processes. Consequently, the contribution of this work extends beyond the particular experimental case study by providing a reusable structure for connecting control theory, experimentation, and manufacturing-oriented engineering practice.