Industry is currently undergoing a digital transformation for strengthening its competitiveness through the convergence between industrial automation and data exchange technologies. This trend exploits a multiplicity of technologies from Cyber Physical Systems and intelligent robotics to PLM and big data management, in order to transform the manufacturing systems in a network of smart and autonomous agents. Even if most of the technologies are already available nowadays, the key obstacle lies in the lack of experience in operating with such technologies. To develop the required skills, different strategies for learning should be adopted. The paper describes the first outcomes of TIPHYS ( http://www.tiphys.eu/ ), an EU funded project for the development of ‘social network based doctoral education on Industry 4.0’. The project organizes the learning material as small didactic elements that are accessed through an ontology-based platform. PLM concepts are applied to allow learners to customize their learning path, to provide them with a dynamic repository, whose content evolves and is enriched by the collaborative contribution of students themselves. The ontology structure is described with the help of selected examples.