We work together with all MBO and HBO technology courses in the North and the University of Groningen special courses and attractive internships for technical talents. By bringing academic students to Drachten for part of the Mechanical Engineering master's track, it is easier for them to come into contact with our high-tech SMEs. We are happy to facilitate this with our high-tech shared facility building on the Philips site. In this way, the students experience that you can simply stay in the Northern Netherlands for an interesting and challenging technical career.

Cooperation partners

Our collaboration has now attracted national attention and ING economists describe our 'ecosystem' as the economic engine for the region. We work together with:

• all technical courses at MBO, HBO and WO level and numerous study associations,
• local and regional authorities,
• umbrella organizations for primary education in Fryslân, 
• countless collaboration partners including FME, RoSF, IWCN, TopDutch, Dutch Technology Week, Technet, VNO-NCW-Noord, et cetera.

Future

Working at our companies means contributing to solutions for the major challenges of the future. We call this the 'Big 5 of the High Tech': 3D metal printing, Remote sensoring and big data, Robotics, Visual intelligence and All electric propulsion. We do this by using the most modern product, IT and process technologies or, where necessary, by developing them ourselves. This is possible thanks to the unique pre-competitive collaboration of our R&D departments.

The result is more than 50 new product introductions per year worldwide. Products that, among other things, save human lives, make it easy to operate complex systems and products that are tailored to the individual wishes and needs of consumers and that make data accessible to improve the quality of food.

Our collaboration forms 'The heart of the smart factory region' of North-West Europe.