Martijn Wijns has been awarded the Bronze Certificate from the ECP2 programme

With ECP2 Bronze from software to system architect

Martijn Wijns, software architect at Sioux Technologies in Eindhoven (NL), has been awarded the Bronze certificate from the ECP2 programme, a European certified precision engineering course that is a collaboration between euspen and DSPE. He is the sixth person to receive this certificate since the first one was presented in 2015. The Bronze certificate requires 25 points (one point roughly equals one course day); Silver requires 35 points and Gold 45 points, which qualify a participant for the title ‘Certified Precision Engineer’. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic measures, there was no “flowers and cake” ceremony for officially presenting the Bronze certificate to Wijns.

Euspen’s ECP2 programme grew out of DSPE’s Certified Precision Engineer (CPE) 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 an in-depth knowledge of the relevant disciplines.

Martijn Wijns studied Computer Science at Eindhoven University of Technology and did an internship at Sioux. Because of the good match, he started working there as a software engineer after graduating in 2007. He successfully pursued a typical software career and became a software architect four years ago. In 2019, he switched to the mechatronics department within the company. “We have our own culture of building systems, based on a holistic system engineering vision. My ambition is to become a system architect and that is what I can learn from my colleagues here.”

The courses that Wijns has followed in recent years are geared to that ambition. “It started with a course in the field of vision; Machine Vision for Mechatronic Systems. The vision architect leading that course gave me a complete overview of the subject. That made me want more, also because you meet people from other companies during courses and you can learn from their approach. So, I decided to follow the basic courses Mechatronics System Design, Part 1 and 2. For mechanical engineers that was easier to deal with than for me, from my software background, but I enjoyed really going into study mode and thinking broader than bits and bytes.”

After a course-free intermezzo, Wijns then followed Motion Control Tuning. “That was because of the experimental set-up with which we had to work; this really gave me a feel for the subject, while the Dynamics and Modelling course enabled me to understand the theoretical background. Next, I followed Actuation and Power Electronics. I like to understand the various disciplines, so that I can communicate with colleagues, for example when we’re in the integration phase of a system development project.” It helps that Sioux is very encouraging when it comes to personal development.

Last year, Wijns took the Design Principles course. “It was nice to dive into mechanics and at the end of the course to consider bringing all the disciplines together in one system in a balanced way. The ultimate question: how can you make use of the strengths of the different disciplines?” Now, a course on soft skills development is planned first; this will also help to bring that ‘dot on the horizon’ closer: becoming a system architect. “Ultimately, I want to work towards the Silver and Gold ECP2 certificates.”