Within the field of VET practice and research radical changes and development have taken place in recent years. On the one hand, the focus on vocational training or labour market education has shifted from education and teaching to learning and/or competence development. On the other hand, the learning mode in vocational training has moved in the direction of workplace learning or work-based learning. These shifts are probably a result of the concept of lifelong learning and findings of research on expertise and knowledge acquisition. Policymakers, practitioners and researchers in many countries pointed out that participation in lifelong learning is one of the main means to ensure the continuous adaptation of skills to the requirements of the economy and the quality of life in a learning society or knowledge-based economy respectively. For example the implementation of lifelong learning also plays a key role in achieving the Lisbon goals. Furthermore research has suggested that informal learning takes precedence over formal learning, and comprises the majority of learning that occurs in the workplace. Also employers and trainees frequently complain that classical seminars or training courses teach too much inert theory. The importance of informal learning one can see in the fact, that almost all EU member states are formulating policies for validating the outcomes of individuals' informal and non-formal learning. To summarize, active (work process) knowledge or competence and workplace learning have become crucial issues of VET research and practice in recent years. On one hand, there are increasing efforts in many European countries in designing and assessing workplace or work-related learning arrangements in VET practice. On the other hand, there have been a lot of empirical studies on competencies or work process knowledge in the European VET research community. Analysing all these activities it becomes obvious that there is missing link between both fields of action, namely the combination of both perspectives. In this paper I present a concept combining empirical work process analysis and the design of demand-oriented learning arrangements in real work processes. The didactical concept integrates learning and working as well as it combines informal learning with formal learning in further education. The whole concept contains 5 steps, which are the analysis of work process and training needs, the selection of participants, including an assessment procedure, the planning of the learning process integrated in the work process, the execution of the further training measure and finally the evaluation and certification of acquired competencies.