The Role of Industrial Attachment in Enhancing Polytechnic Lecturers’ Competency in Industry 4.0 Technologies

Industrial attachment programs are increasingly recognized as a strategic approach to enhance lecturer competencies in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions, particularly in preparing for Industry 4.0.However, limited studies have explored their effectiveness among Malaysian polytechnic lecturers.Therefore, this quantitative study was conducted to examine the impact of industrial attachment programs on lecturer competency development across four domains, technical skills, theoretical knowledge, pedagogical integration and soft skills.Data were collected from 150 lecturers representing Electrical, Mechanical, Civil and IT disciplines using a validated 27item questionnaire.Descriptive statistics were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 26.0.The findings revealed very high improvement across all domains, with technical skills recording the highest mean score (M = 4.68, SD = 0.58), particularly in IoT operation (M = 4.75) and industry software proficiency (M = 4.72).This study confirms that industrial attachment programs effectively bridge the gap between academia and industry, ensuring lecturers are better equipped to deliver Industry 4.0relevant education.Recommendations include strengthening industryacademia collaboration, making attachments a regular requirementand supporting lecturers in integrating industry experiences into teaching.