About Multitude AB

The work to ensure a qualified competence development process in the context of life long learning started 1998 within the car and metal sector in Sweden. The initiative to start the work was taken by Anders Krantz, Multitude AB and Rolf Bjällås Mapaz AB. The consortium expanded very quickly and the first project was settled with partners from IFMetall, Sandvik Coromant AB, Arbetförmedlingen, Lernia AB and several SME companies within the metal sector.

The work focused both on how to define the new skills for CNC Technicians as competence goals both on the company and the individual level. At the same time the development of the internet solution started with the idea to transform a so called MRP system supporting the production process into a web service supporting a qualified education process on an individual level. The first pilot was made in 2002 and the complete concept including content for validation both practical and theoretical of CNC Technicians using only 8 hours supported by the web service MZ. After the validation the result automatically was generated as a certificate or an individual activity plan for competence development only of the missing parts. The process is iterative and can easily be modified towards new skills requirements.

Today the model for CNC Technicians is implemented quite deep as a de facto standard in the car and metal sector in Sweden.

In 2004 Anders Krantz Multitude AB and Rolf Bjällås received the SKAPA award for the best innovation to develop the society in the county of Gävleborg and the MZ innovation was nominated to Swedish national final the same year.
The companies work to develop a method, content and web service have had impact as new skill requirements on universities and upper secondary schools and for the individuals for their life long learning process.
Since the method and web support MZ is general we have during the last years made transfer to other sectors like Finance, Service Technicians, Health Care, Personal HR for individual self assessments like Working Style and Key Competences etc.

The first pilot has been made to make a portal for cooperation within a sector and between sectors. This was the result of the German EU Article 6 project 2005-2007 where Multitude AB and Mapaz AB showed the possibilities to use MZ as a portal and model on an EU-level to create, use, reuse, share, transfer content and support on an individual level in the context for Life Long Learning.

This new way to cooperate on a large scale we have given the name International Competence Transfer Network – ICTN.