It started in mid-February with 27 little avatars behind a screen of COVID 19 restrictions listening to our proposal for a half-year internship. The assignments consisted of developing a ‘horizontal packaging solution’ for the automatic packaging of products in plastic bags and a ‘production order recombination unit’ where various parts, produced in different departments from production, are combined into a unique tailored order destined for each specific customer.
Before starting this trajectory, we informed students that we have deliberately formulated the description of these assignments concisely. It stimulates creativity and ingenuity complemented by hard work with the premise that this has a positive effect on the application and iterations of the product during the process. After the introduction, we divided students into five groups. Two groups worked on the packaging solution, and the other three groups merging different items into one order.
Proof of concept
During several on-line and interactive brainstorming sessions and successive rounds of questions, they worked based on their market research towards an interim presentation with surprising ideas and solutions.
After the preliminary presentations, we combined the best ideas to develop into two working prototypes as proof of concept for the second phase of the internship. Next to technical challenges in this phase, the team had to deal with the other non-medical consequences of the Corona crisis. Part availability, long delivery times, and joined forces to construct a working application with all the restrictions the teams have to take into account and a deadline to meet. But in the end, they succeeded and that against all the expectations of the students themselves!
Working prototype
Ultimately, students completed the projects by delivering documentation, design files, and final presentations with working prototypes. They made a valuable contribution showing us which choices to make in further developments and optimizations of our product portfolio. It offers us insight into possible follow-up assignments and areas to make a profit by optimizing our portfolio.
Our special thanks to all students and teachers Amine, Bas, Cas, Daan, Dion, Gijs v. H., Gijs v. O., Gijs W., Harm, Jan, Jeroen, Jesse, Jop, Julian, Koen, Krijn , Marijn, Maurice, Max v. O., Michael, Niels, Stan, Stef, Teun K., Teun V., Thom, Timo, Wessel, William, Wouter and Max van Helmond for their outstanding efforts and you can be proud of the result.
Good luck and have fun with the continuation of the studies.