Cambridge students visit Zund UK
Last month Zund UK welcomed a group of ISMM postgraduate manufacturing students from the Institute for Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge to their demonstration facilities in St Albans.
ISMM – Industrial Systems, Manufacture and Management is an intensive one-year programme that prepares high calibre graduates for accelerated careers in industry. The course aims to bridge the gap between academia and industry by integrating classroom teaching, company visits and in-company projects.
Zund UK hosted 5 small group sessions across the week to meet COVID guidelines and maintain social distancing. The event gave students an insight into Zund’s market-leading digital cutting technology. A mixture of digital cutting demonstrations for graphics, packaging and composite applications were shown to the students with the use of robotics, automation, contactless part marking and projection.
Students also had the opportunity to see the Zund Cut Centre software in action, including the ZCC dashboard which demonstrated the plethora of real-time production data available and offering them all a great insight into available information as they will be managing factories or production lines in the future.
Simon Pattinson, Industrial Tutor at Cambridge University said “Company visits are an essential part of the learning process, and we greatly appreciate Zund’s support, especially in such difficult times. The ISMM programme is over 50 years old – but reinforcement learning can be traced back to Confucius; “I hear and I forget, I see, and I remember, I do and I understand”.
Nicki Kay, Managing Director at Zund UK said “It was a privilege to share with these Managers and Directors of the future the latest in cutting technologies and to see their obvious interest in the opportunities for automation and efficiencies in manufacturing. Zund UK is very proud to be associated with the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing and to support their students with a hands-on experience that will hopefully stay with them as their careers progress.”
Reflecting back on the event, one of the students said “The Zund visit was great, the format with a presentation to get to know the company before diving into a practical demonstration gave us a well-rounded understanding of what they do. It was a wonderful learning opportunity to see the capabilities of the cutting systems and how versatile they can be whilst maintaining their precision. We were also impressed by the business model and how Zund buys back old machines. Next, we would love to see how the machines are made in Switzerland!”