ECP2 Bronze for double duty on mechatronic system design
Maurice Lemmens, system architect at VDL ETG Technology & Development in Eindhoven (NL), has been awarded the Bronze certificate from the ECP2 programme.
ECP2 is a European certified precision engineering course programme, a collaboration between euspen and DSPE. He is the eighth person to receive this certificate since the first one was presented in 2015. Jan Willem Martens, the founding father of the precursor DSPE certification programme, presented Lemmens with the certificate and flowers.
Euspen’s ECP2 programme grew out of DSPE’s Certified Precision Engineer programme, which was developed in the Netherlands in 2008 as a commercially available series of training courses. In 2015, euspen, DSPE’s European counterpart, decided to take certification to a European level. The resulting ECP2 programme reflects industry demand for multidisciplinary system thinking and in-depth knowledge of the relevant disciplines. To promote participation, a certificate scheme was instigated. The Bronze certificate requires 25 points (one point equals roughly one course day), Silver requires 35 points and Gold 45 points, which qualify a participant for the title ‘Certified Precision Engineer’.
Maurice Lemmens obtained a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Eindhoven and a master’s degree in engineering product design at HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (NL). Subsequently, he worked for 23 years at Océ (now Canon Production Printing) in Venlo (NL), where he was hired as a mechanical designer. Soon after this, however, he started looking beyond the borders of the mechanical domain, switching over to a lead designer/system architect role for various Océ media-handling systems (copiers and printers). In 2019, after a short intermezzo at ASML, he joined VDL ETG Technology & Development, where he is now working as a system architect for wafer-handler platform development.
While at Océ, he followed the ECP2-certified Mechatronics System Design part 1 and part 2 courses, but his post-academic training career really took off at VDL ETG. In just over two years he has taken four courses. The first one was Basics & Design Principles for Ultra-clean Vacuum. “Vacuum became very important in my work, but I had as yet little knowledge of it, so I signed up for that course on my own initiative.” Then followed System Architecting. “It’s true that I was kind of self-taught in this area and have worked in that role for a long time. Still, I learned a lot; it was a very pleasant course.” When the courses Mechatronics System Design part 1 and part 2 were offered in-company at VDL ETG, Lemmens was given the opportunity to take them again – eight years later.
“It was definitely time to upgrade my knowledge in this area. The subjects were the same, but the content had changed considerably in parts, such as software and amplifiers. The way in which the soft skills were treated was also different from last time. In short, there were enough deltas to pick up from these courses. Another reason was that on my TO DO list there is an action called “Knowledge retainer and knowledge application”. The aim is to keep the knowledge of this subject alive in the minds of people who have followed the courses, but also to make it accessible to people who have not followed them. It should become a kind of quick reference book, with golden tips, rules of thumb and points of interest for mechatronic design. It is at the bottom of my list because of the busyness of the projects, but the aim is to create a kind of mechatronical version of Des Duivels Prentenboek (The Devil’s Picture Book, Wim van der Hoek’s legendary design principles textbook, ed.), geared to the type of projects we are working on at VDL ETG, especially for the semiconductor industry.”
Lemmens was aware of the existence of the ECP2 certification scheme with Bronze, Silver and Gold, but wasn’t focused on it. “During the courses, Adrian Rankers (from Mechatronics Academy, one of the course providers, ed.) did talk about it, but I had never counted my points, so it was a surprise when Jan Willem Martens came by with the certificate and the flowers.” Lemmens is not going for Silver right now, but he certainly has courses on his wish list. “I can benefit from Dynamics & Modelling, while Thermal Effects in Mechatronic Systems is also fairly close to my area of work. And there are more interesting ECP2 courses. If I could win a silver medal there, that would be a nice bonus,” he concludes with a wink.
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Jan Willem Martens handing over the ECP2 Bronze certificate to Maurice Lemmens.