January 2023
Clean air; a necessity
PIEK and Weller will intensify their years of cooperation even further. PIEK and Weller have been working together closely for years now. Weller regularly provides PIEK with various equipment for training purposes. For instance, when it comes down to soldering, trainees at PIEK utilise Weller soldering stations to master the intricacies of hand soldering with this equipment. Also, PIEK certifies [...]
Building without losing materials
Waste is no longer acceptable in constructing buildings nowadays. Material loss is considered a design error and is expected not to occur anymore. The building meeting the new requirements is located in Heerlen in the Parkstad region. The Green Transformable Building, GTB-Lab in short, shows that you can build without wasting materials. Furthermore, the building can undergo various transformations, adapting [...]
December 2022
October 2022
IPC-certifications for the defence industry
The war in the Ukraine seems not to be over soon. No matter how bad this is. Many countries and their political leaders are now supplying many weapons to the Ukraine. And not just that, defence budgets are also being brought back up to standard. And meanwhile NATO has declared Russia to be the biggest threat for Europe. All these [...]
June 2022
Chips in your head
Brain implants have been reality rather than science fiction for a long time and there are still many interesting developments in this field. These will have to be approached with a great sense of responsibility, because we will have to prevent a society from arising in which they are turned into a pure money maker allowing the very rich to [...]
April 2022
PIEK and IPC present at SMTconnect 2022
On 10 May the new edition starts. The Nuremberg SMTconnect will open its doors then. This year too PIEK will be present on this three-day event together with IPC, the American umbrella organisation for the technical interconnect industry. PIEK looks forward to welcoming you at stand #4-557. PIEK is one of the few IPC educational centres that is authorised to [...]
January 2022
Robots are here to stay
We may not realise it, but over one third of all work worldwide is being executed by robots at this moment. One example is machines performing repetitive actions, and another is machines that execute daily activities on the basis of algorithms. In this article we will take you into the world of robots. Before we go over a few examples [...]
December 2021
Strange times for a festive season
We all thought that we could put Covid-19 behind us after the summer, but we could not have been more wrong. New mutations keep popping up. Like 2020, 2021 has turned out to be a strange year as well. There has been remote working, and the pendulum has swung between more freedom and less freedom, all to contain the virus. [...]
November 2021
John Cockerill Group, passionate entrepreneurs
Founded in 1817 the John Cockerill Group develops large-scale technological solutions to meet the needs of its time, driven by the entrepreneurial spirit and passion for innovation of its founder. It is active in the conservation of natural resources, contributions to greener mobility, sustainable production methods, the battle against security risks and the facilitation of access to renewable energy. What [...]
October 2021
Productronica 2021
This year too PIEK is present at the Munich Productronica fair, together with IPC. This world famous fair is taking place from 16-19 November 2021. This year the fair will again be overflowing with innovations, and experts in all sorts of fields will exchange ideas all the time. Themes like the electronics of the future, trends in various industries, growth [...]
The Future of Vegetables and Fruit
The cultivation of vegetables and fruit is also dominated by developments in the technical interconnect industry. This article will discuss a number of items that are being developed, being experimented with and even being applied. Growth world population All planning offices state that medical developments lead to people living longer, which means that the world population is expected to grow [...]
September 2021
Ethics are essential in every organisation
PIEK regularly talks to leading experts in the field of the Digital Society. One of our recent interviewees was dr. Katleen Gabriels. She is a moral philosopher at Maastricht University (UM), where she is also the director of the Digital Society study programme. The first question about her personal story gets her talking straight away. ‘I studied German and philosophy. [...]
Do we still need agriculture and cattle farming?
In some 30 years there will be nearly 10 billion people on earth. All these people want to eat and drink. With the development of in-vitro meat one might think that there will not be employment in cattle farming in the future. Moreover, it would be better for the environment, too. Still developments do not go that fast, and the [...]
August 2021
Do algorithms already determine our lives?
Algorithms are part and parcel of our lives. We accept them and make abundant use of them, or rather they make abundant use of us. Social media platforms thrive on algorithm use, and companies, governments and obviously criminals are no strangers to them either. They can be very handy and make our lives easier. Think for instance of a navigation [...]
Cybercrime, hotter than ever
The newspapers are already warning against cybercriminals offering a vaccine against Covid-19. It has never been easier to become a cybercriminal, also because legislation worldwide is lagging behind. Via the Internet or the Darknet criminals offer crime as a service (CaaS). This involves asking a third party to infiltrate or even shut down another party’s computer network. The trade in [...]
July 2021
Russian cows: VR technology boosts milk production
Farmers are indispensable in food supplies. Despite developments in the field of in-vitro meat and other emerging technologies, we will remain dependent on agriculture and livestock farming in the coming decades. This sector is still responsible for over 25% of CO2 emissions, and it is not likely to change any time soon. This article will dig into current and imminent [...]
