Dr. Stetter ITQ, Software Engineering Expert under the Spanish sun
Dr. Stetter ITQ is part of the ITQ Group and the Spanish nearshore partner for collaborative Software and Systems Engineering projects with the German ITQ GmbH. With this intelligent combination of technical expertise from Germany plus highly motivated specialists from abroad, software development projects are implemented professionally, easily scalable, and cost-efficiently. The company also offers future-oriented student projects with the topics of sustainable technology to realize its greater vision of a SMART GREEN ISLAND. The vision lives on Gran Canaria becoming a demonstrator island for Smart and Green Projects. All Education 4.0 concepts and activities targeting Young Talents are designed to promote interest in sustainable, mechatronic projects, to support the students’ start in a professional working career and to bring them together with companies at an early stage.
The company celebrated its 5th birthday in 2021 and underlined its success story from a start-up to a promising and professional partner in digitalization. In recent years, the company in Las Palmas has grown from originally two to around 27 national and international software and systems engineers, consultants, and students today. Besides the international engineering work, the company has engaged in more than 10 student projects focussing on the topics Smart Mobility, Smart Home, Connected Systems and Smart Farming. More than 40 students were able to develop first concepts and prototypes e.g. for a Solar Golf Car or a Bamboo Solar Car which make use of solar power, as well as PlastiX, a project to find solutions for ocean pollution by plastic. With the international SMART GREEN ISLAND MAKEATHON, which took place for the fifth time in 2020, the ITQ Group and Dr. Stetter ITQ were able to gather more than 1000 participants to work on innovative Smart and Green Technologies.
Solar Golf Car by Dr. Stetter ITQ
Unfortunately, over the past months, the company had to rearrange or even cancel several student projects and onsite events due to the Covid19-Pandemic. „Like every business, we saw struggles first, especially as the lockdown periods on Gran Canaria were very strict and of long duration. Work on business projects was fine due to an already existing and fully working digital infrastructure. We saw more difficulties in keeping the student projects alive. The life of the young students changed dramatically; some deal with it just fine, but some struggled and working remotely stolled. We had to deeply engage to keep the projects going,” explains Lars Bornecke, Branch Manager at Dr. Stetter ITQ.
Thus, the company felt the urgent need to further engage with Young Talents and to deepen innovative Education 4.0 projects. Together with the ITQ GmbH team and the University of Applied Sciences Rhine-Waal the company is working on a new concept to further promote the vision of the SMART GREEN ISLAND. The new idea of building up „Green Innovation Labs“ on the island will give Young Talents a new home and workplace providing all needed tools and materials to develop Smart and Green Projects as well as build first prototypes.
All those projects are possible thanks to a vivid local and international network of universities, sponsors and partners. Companies like Beckhoff, B&R as well as Igus have been supporting the Dr. Stetter ITQ for several years already. Following the Education 4.0 approach and providing Young Talents with latest technology and expertise to develop innovative Smart and Green Projects, we see a chance for many new Smart and Green Business Models.
PlastiX student project on Gran Canaria
The Dr. Stetter ITQ Business Model flourished during the pandemic months with the service products around the topics of Augmented/Virtual Reality as well as “Digital Twin” applications. Lockdowns and global travel restrictions caused limited access to the real physical machines and systems, and the desire for digitalization of reality has clearly spurred on. The established digitalization of the machine structures and the use of Artificial Intelligence in simulation environments allowed many customers to dare new approaches. “The Dr. Stetter ITQ and many of our clients see the crisis as a chance to renew encrusted structures and to further deepen the acceptance of remote engineering,” says Lars Bornecke.
Today and the upcoming years the industry faces already new globalization challenges with bottlenecks in the supply chain. Many customers cannot meet their delivery dates. They are forced to reduce production times again due to missing parts from China or other places over the world. But up to now these effects didn’t cause any problems to the business, because clients are investing a lot in digitalization.
With all the obstacles and challenges these times it is more important than ever to not forget the bigger picture. We need to keep working on innovative and sustainable solutions that will get us healthy and safe into the upcoming centuries. At Dr. Stetter ITQ and the whole ITQ Group we are often ahead of times. Since the vision of testing a SMART GREEN ISLAND on Gran Canaria we have initiated many innovative projects on the Spanish island. In the coming year we are planning to kick-off another Smart and Innovative Project around Smart Farmbots and how farming can become more efficient, sustainable, and climate-friendly by digitalization. In addition, we are working on improving the education of young people through robotic and digitalization projects in schools and universities.
The future is us! We are working in the field of digitalization, sustainability, and modern education since more than a decade. Therefore, we look at the future with great optimism!
