Maarten De Groof, Tom Soeffers and Jordi Veraghtert came on-board last year. Their recruitments fit in the development and production scale up of Hammer-IMS. All three of them previously executed an internship as part of their technical bachelor education program.
Artificial intelligence hardware and software
Maarten De Groof studied applied informatics at PXL in Hasselt. During his internship at Hammer-IMS, he had developed a machine vision demonstrator for detecting black dots on plastics. Afterwards, Hammer-IMS continued the development and packaged it in its Edge-Vision product portfolio. Now, as an employee, Maarten takes part in development work in this regard. Maarten particularly appreciates that he is involved in both hardware and software related development in artificial intelligence and robotics.
Maarten: "It is great to be part of the Edge-Vision product portfolio and grow along with it. Apart from development, I visit trade exhibitions and factories where I do system installations. In my free time, I develop apps and games. I also like traveling and conducting and playing music."
Quality control machine construction from a to z
Tom Soeffers and Jordi Veraghtert both studied electro-mechanics in Thomas More in Geel. Their joint internship focused on inspection machine development from a to z. Tom and Jordi say that the end-to-end aspect, covering mechanics, electrics and system control, make it really interesting.
Tom explains: "We develop machine mechanics and electrics in software and tune the design according to customer requirements. Then we order components and assemble the machines ourselves. My father, an electrician, taught me a lot about electricity during my childhood. At Hammer-IMS, I like the open company culture and the interaction among friends. Besides my work I am involved in soccer, judo and a youth movement."
"I like developing existing as well as new machine designs, from design to installation," Jordi says. "Machine construction runs like a red thread through my life, and my job at Hammer-IMS corresponds perfectly with this. It is important to take into account customer feedback during development and throughout the product's lifetime. On a personal level, I am interested in cars (more specifically VW Transporter) and Formula 1 apart from traveling and playing soccer."
Creatively bridge the gap between education and job
Every year Hammer-IMS collaborates with various trainees and student workers from different fields of study. Operations manager Nele Reynders adds: "As an innovative Flemish technology player with an international scope, we help creatively bridge the gap between education and the job market. We resolutely choose to teach technical internship students hands-on marketing skills. Conversely, we also want internship students in marketing and administration to gain experience with more technical tasks."
"We are pleased that for a number of students the internships mean a stepping stone to a full-time job at Hammer-IMS. Through the internships, we get to know and appreciate each other so that the transition from education to the business world goes very smoothly."
