Successful project management today means an extra focus on quality, on time delivery, strict compliance with the budget and last but not least meeting the agreed deliverables of the customer.

We, at VDL ETG, believe in a projectmanager as a "product champion", which stands for its mission, which is with one leg at the customer and has focus on results. Often a "five-legged sheep", looking ahead and paying attention to communication. Our project managers are full time responsible for their projects, their teams, their partners and last but not least their customer. They are the pivot in their project.

"A project manager with us must also be an innovator and a connector, always looking for partners with whom we can mutually reinforce each other", says Marco van Schaick, Project and Program Manager.

A solid supply chain is one of the keys to our success. Ultimately, it is important to acquire the parts at the right quality-price ratio within the available time.

Our goal is to surprise the customer with our performance on all these aspects. That is why we pay a lot of attention to the supply chain. We have proved this claim by  calculating a module for some of our customers. 

"Supply Chain is of course more than buying, it is the organization of the entire process, ensuring that our customers or mechanics have the right parts on time, with the required quality and with an attractive cost level" says Rob Brands, Manager Support Office

Our development and engineering does support our primal service to build machines. We take that responsibility very seriously. We do not only supply a package of drawings, but focus on an optimizing and testing the systems. System engineering is therefore at a high level at VDL ETG.

Our mechatronic and software architects think in functional requirements. Our lead engineers guarantee an industrialised design. This in a close cooperation with our method engineers, suppliers and very experienced mechanics.

Our engineers do value working together with partners in and outside VDL. The collaboration with for example VDL ETG T & D with more than 250 engineers - including specialists in the field of tribology, dynamic or thermal behavior - is illustrative. This makes it possible to form a truly multidisciplinary team, to fill in a customer challanges and also to innovate together.

"Multi-disciplinary is only interesting if you also include real specialists in your team, which we can do at VDL ETG" according to Ivar Schram, Manager Development & Engineering.

What is integral assembly? This can best be illustrated with the development and construction of a complex manufacturing line under one roof.

Building an one-off, a prototype goes always hand in hand with the necessary issues that are still being determined during assembly. This requires a lot of flexibility and craftsmanship from our mechanics, engineers and organization. The commissioning, testing and purchasing of a complete working machines is much complicater than a mechanical sub-system.

Within our assembly there is therefore an integral approach, our top mechanics are already involved during the development and are responsable to deliver turnkey a machine to the customer, world wide.

The craftsmanship and experience of these mechanics is also available for small build to print series of machines or mechatronic modules, which results in practical improvements. We stimulate our mechanics to improve because we believe that their craftsmanship is the key to quality.

"System quality is our number 1 position, we strive to raise the bar higher than our customer" says Herman Nolte, Operations Manager.