Internship at iwis
Iwis is a global player with local presence since 2019. That was the founding date of the plant in Oradea. It’s the newest production site among all of them, the others being located in Whitestown, Pinghu City and Landsberg. While iwis is divided into mobility systems, smart connect and drive systems, the plant in Oradea only produces chains and tensioners as part of the mobility systems section. Even though the plant is only five years old, they already have 150 employees and are planning to expand the plant within this year. The main customer is BMW, but chains and tensioners are sold to Daimler, VW, Audi, Porsche, etc. as well.
During our time at iwis, we were able to get an insight-view of the different departments of the company. Starting with the chain assembly, we worked our way through the production area. There we went in detail about each single step and machine that is needed in order to get to the final product. Each machine combines a number of different steps, for example the machine producing the inner links combines certain steps, which includes placing the bushes onto the ground plate, adjusting the bush angle, egalizing, putting the upper plate onto the bushes, egalizing again and applying pressure on the inner link to keep the inner link together. Afterwards, the inner links are connected through outer plates, the pins are inserted into the bushes to connect outer plates and inner links to an infinite chain. This chain gets camera checked first, to find out whether any visual issues occur regarding the inner links, outer plates, pins or bushes. This is then followed by the breaking and agility tests, the oiling and finally the division of the chain into their proper lengths. During the next couple of days we got to be part of the maintenance team. To welcome us, they prepared a small project for us, so we could get some hands-on work in the production site. As one task of the maintenance team is informing the employees about the technical instructions of various machines, they prepare presentations about those. Since the instructions came from Landsberg, they were only written in German and thus needed to be translated to English, so we were the obvious choice for that task. Another objective we got to do was changing the filters on every machine inside the production area. It felt great to be helpful for the team by fulfilling our given task! The next department we visited was the tensioner team. There we got to know about the different types of tensioners produced for different car companies, such as screw in tensioners used by Daimler. The quality department concluded our visit to the production area. Here we measured the engravings of the sprockets to make sure they meet the quality standards. Overall they were extremely open to all of our questions and kindly explained every detail of the production.
Besides the production departments we were introduced to the office work as well. We visited the Aftermarket, Environmental department, Marketing, Planning, Project management and Finance. This gave us a great overview about the diverse job opportunities offered by iwis. After answering our questions, one person of each department sat down with us for a deeper discussion about the job. Especially learning about the aftermarket was very interesting, because we had never heard of it before, so it was something new for all of us.
What we found very remarkable was the effort iwis put into its events such as ice cream thursday, monthly birthday celebrations and the great summer party. Through the party we got to know the employees on a more personal level. The party gave us an insight to Romanian partylife, as well as the bar in the city center where we went to as an afterparty with some of the employees. Of course we also visited the city center ourselves during the daytime. It was incredibly beautiful, especially because of the architecture. We walked through the city center, bought some ice cream, went shopping and enjoyed the pleasant atmosphere of the city. Another must see definitely is the aquapark Nymphaea. After spending an amazing time there, we walked up mushroom hill. There we had a great overview over the whole city and enjoyed a nice picnic under the trees.
All over all it was an amazing experience and we had a great time at iwis. The employees treated us as one of their own and everyone was extremely welcoming and including and tried to make our stay as good as possible!
A special thanks goes out to Maria Ioan who took really good care of us and who was always there when we needed her help, even during the weekends.
Leopold & Maximilian Harthun, Viola Ballmann