APEN (Asia Professional Education Network) and ERIA held ASEAN Industrial Human Resources Development (i-HRD) Seminar with participations of Institute of Technology of Cambodia and Institute of Technology Bandung on 3 October 2011 at ERIA Annex Office.

Smooth progress of economic growth in the future depends on whether several problems of structure could be solved or not. One of the large structural problems is industrial human resource development.

We know that the main force of ASEAN economic development is based on manufacturing industries. Regarding manufacturing industries, basic researches of science are essential. Meanwhile, a great number of middle managers who have appropriate scientific knowledge and fully understand situations on sites as well are required. The cultivation of such middle managers is called industrial human resource development ("i-HRD" for short). i-HRD is very important for the ASEAN economic development. Furthermore, i-HRD is also a key for implementing the CADP (Comprehensive Asia Development Plan) promoted by ERIA.

On the other hand, the problem is i-HRD requires the educational method specified for i-HRD. As it couldn't be accomplished by an ordinary educational method, the specified educational method should be established. The key point of the specified method is PBL (Project Based Learning). An international organization established with the aim of diffusing PBL to Asia is the APEN (Asia Professional Education Network), co-hosting this seminar.

The seminar was an extremely-valuable opportunity for the main educational organizations of ASEAN to exchange information about i-HRD based on PBL as one pillar.

ERIA strongly recognizes the importance of i-HRD in Asia and believes that PBL promoted by APEN is remarkably effective for that purpose and has powerfully advanced partnership with APEN. After the seminar, the board of directors meeting of APEN was held. At the end, Chairperson Mr. Ishijima (President of AIIT) concluded that APEN shall accept new participations of:

- National University of Singapore
- Institute of Technology of Cambodia
- University of Indonesia
- Institute of Technology, Bandung
- Thammasat University 

After then, Dr. PHOL Norith, Deputy Director in charge of Planning and Development of Institute of Technology of Cambodia and Dr. Ade Sjafruddin, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Institute of Techonology, Bandung have signed the participating documents.

Summary of i-HRD Seminar.pdf