Internship at S-GARD

Not really into making coffee? During an internship at S-GARD in Heinsberg, this will probably only be for your own use.

Hi, I’m Mara and I’m studying Design Engineering Fashion at the HS Niederrhein in Mönchengladbach. I’ll be at S-GARD for the next six months, completing my internship semester in the product development department.

Developing protective clothing for firefighters? You’re wondering how you come up with that? Well, I can’t really tell you exactly, except that I find it more fascinating to work on functional clothing than on everyday clothing – and the job advert also matched my expectations .

So exciting product – yep, complicated product? You could say it’s the supreme discipline in the clothing industry. It’s good that the S-GARD team is prepared and knows how best to start such an internship.
To get off to a good start, it makes sense to familiarise yourself with the company as a whole. What basically has to be done in order to be able to offer the products to the customer? Which departments are there? What work has to be done by whom and where? And not to forget: What does the current product range look like?

To get first-hand answers to these and other questions, I was given an induction plan. This enabled me to spend the first three weeks going through the different departments. The employees openly explained and showed me their day-to-day work. Here and there I was able to work independently straight away. In other places, I had to learn to look through and take notes.

But one thing at a time… I’ve been here for three weeks now and I’d like to tell you about my first impressions and experiences of my internship here at S-GARD.

My working day starts at 8.00 a.m. or at 8.30 a.m. if the trains don’t run to schedule. However, this is not a problem due to the half-hour flexitime. The working day ends at 4.30pm or 5.00pm, depending on the time. And yes, it’s not recommended to rely on the train in a rural area, but it’s still doable – if you have patience .

The first few days are always exciting, with lots and lots of new information and impressions. As I have now also come from three semesters of corona-related distance lectures, it was also a change to appear somewhere in person again. Holding meetings/lectures while you’re still in bed no longer takes place, but an internship at a distance would probably be a bit pointless. I am therefore very happy to be able to come to the company. I also have my own workspace with my own e-mail address and telephone number set up for me beforehand. You don’t get that everywhere.

I was definitely given a warm welcome and was introduced to all my colleagues during the tour of the company. Everyone has their own area of responsibility: design, cutting, developing layouts and writing parts lists, creating certification documents, model maintenance, sewing, repairs, sales, purchasing, customs, warehousing and so on…

Equipped with my familiarisation plan, I started immediately. Every day, I familiarised myself with the daily work routine of my new colleagues in a different department.

The first two weeks centred directly around the products. In other words, getting to know them and understanding the layer structures and the resulting properties. Familiarisation also includes reading the standard, according to which everything has to be designed and manufactured. Would I rather read a novel – definitely. But even if it’s not quite as exciting to read, it’s still helpful for understanding the product features.
The next step was to make model changes to the technical drawings, familiarise myself with the basics of the Assyst pattern construction system and carry out sewing work. Production takes place abroad, but sample parts and minor repairs are carried out here in-house. I was able to actively support the clothing team on a very special order. George, the mascot of a fire station, was given his own customised new firefighter suit.

In the third week, the focus was more on the activities that have to be carried out around the product. In other words, seeing the warehouse and carrying out spot checks on incoming goods, as well as getting to know the tasks in purchasing, customs and certification. As you may have already surmised, these were the days when we mostly just learnt by looking around.

When meetings were scheduled, I was immediately invited to take part from day one. Of course, I wasn’t able to have a say yet, but I knew what tasks there were/are in the development team and how tasks are allocated.

You are involved in the day-to-day business of the company and taken seriously as part of the team. But you also get your own project, namely to develop a concept for what the firefighter protective clothing of tomorrow could look like. Whenever no new tasks come up, you can simply get on with your work.

At the end of the crash course through all departments, the only thing left to do was the taster course in marketing. And lo and behold, in addition to preparing posts for social media, I was allowed to write this blog post. Have I ever written a blog post before? Nope. Am I a particularly good writer? I’ll leave that decision up to you.

But hopefully you can see that the range of tasks at S-GARD is extensive. My tasks for the near future are, of course, more from the product development department with design proposals and creating sketches. Boring is definitely not a word that could be used to describe everyday life here.

You get the chance to use the skills you have already acquired but also enough opportunities to learn new ones. I think the mixture of supervised work and independent completion of tasks is particularly successful.

Another positive aspect is the collegial interaction and the relaxed atmosphere among the employees.

I’m looking forward to the next few months here at S-Gard.