According to the Philippines Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Circular Memorandum Order (CMO) 101 series of 2017, one of the allowed Elective Courses for the Electronics Engineering (ECE) Program is Instrumentation and Control which includes Advanced Instrumentation and Control Systems and Robotics. With these elective courses, there will be a need to have designated laboratory facilities and equipment which includes Mechatronics and Automation Equipment. This study aims to bridge the academe-industry gap by integrating a project based learning approach. The students of Jose Rizal University designed and developed a project-based four-story elevator trainer that became a platform for the real-world model of an actual elevator. Basic and Advanced Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and Human Machine Interface (HMI) programming skills of the students were enhanced as they developed twenty comprehensive laboratory experiments on the elevator trainer. A 94.2% usability result indicates substantial effectiveness in learning mechatronics. T-tests for means and equal variance were used to analyze the significance of the elevator trainer in comparing the pre-test and post-test scores of ECE students. An alpha (p-value of 0.00000000013) for the accumulated test scores of each ECE student and (p -value of 0.0000291) for the comparison of average mean score on the six areas: PLC, HMI, Variable Frequency Drive (VFD), pneumatics, electropneumatics, and motor control were found to be both smaller than the alpha of 0.05 for the target 95% confidence level. The study showed that the effectiveness of the elevator trainer was statistically significant in the learning of the ECE students in a project-based approach. The study highlights the need for a more hands-on project in each laboratory course to increase the quality of produced electronics engineering students in the Philippines by allowing them to be well-trained, globally competitive, and equipped with the necessary skills to become industry-ready.