On Wednesday 23 November, Mechanical Engineering students from the University of Groningen (RuG) visited the SKILL building in Drachten. After a long period of digital sessions, the students could attend in person to meet the ICD companies in the building where a lot of research equipment is located. Around 15 students from the Smart Factory, Advanced Instrumentation and Energy systems specialisations attended.

The programme consisted of talks with companies of interest to the students to do an assignment. All ICD companies offer opportunities for design assignments and sometimes graduation assignments for master students, which take about eight months. They also visited the ICD lab and were given a tour of the Philips factory where the Oneblade is manufactured. Here, the students could find out what challenges are involved in Smart Factories. 

After this event, follow-up meetings will take place between the students and the companies to further discuss the assignment in detail. The students plan to start their assignment in February 2023.