On November 26, 2010, an internship program in Industrial Development started at SIPLACE headquarters in Munich,Germany, for a group of engineering students from Friedrich-Alexander-University in Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, in cooperation with the universitys Institute for Manufacturing Automation and Production Systems. The goal: gaining insight into industrial production and practicing skills such as generating new ideas, managing projects and giving presentations. As the innovation leader in its industry, the SIPLACE team has been active in engineering training for many years in order to develop know-how and junior staff for its surface mount technology (SMT) operations. This years group of interns was given the assignment to develop concepts for a tool that would ensure non-stop component feeding to further improve the productivity of the companys placement machines. This type of training is particularly important and interesting for us. On the one hand, the students tackle product development with a creative lack of bias; on the other hand, it is important for young engineers to learn early on in their training what it means to work in a practice-oriented manner. You can never learn soon enough that many theories can be developed into solutions which ultimately turn out to be impractical and stumble on even the smallest things, says Norbert Heilmann, SIPLACE technology scout, about the SIPLACE internship program. In short, it is the mutual give and take that I really enjoy. On their first day, the students received lots of basic information about SMT technology and the SIPLACE SMT machines, which was deepened with hands-on practice at the machines, in order to prepare the students for their work on the development of innovative ideas for continuous component feeding.