Career profile

Besides this descriptive profile, you will find a more detailed and factual resume, by clicking on this icon.

Sun PS Since 2000, I'm an Internet Architect for Sun Professional Services in Canada. After many years of more managerial roles, I'm currently back in a technical position, which is refreshing, to say the least. Working for Sun enables me to do projects on the forefront of Internet technology. So far it involved a project for B2B marketplaces, security for financial transactions over the net, a portal system for asthma patients and more lately web based access to high performance computing and beowulf clusters.

H&R Block My start in Calgary, Canada was an interesting position as a software development manager of the Canadian operation of H&R Block. Leading a team of analysts and programmers we developed the applications needed for this tax preparation company. Interesting was the development of a data-warehouse with marketing information. To improve the distribution of data to the 600 offices we built an intranet website and linked it to the datawarehouse. In a country of seven thousand km east to west this is definitely the way to go.

Compaq / CSS After having cycled for half a year, I worked for Compaq as a project manager for desktop management services. The project involved the analysis and design of a system management environment at the head-quarters, two production sites and an R&D department of a large multi-national. Part of the project was the migration to Windows NT as the desktop OS. Tivoli was introduced for system management functions like remote control, configuration management and software distribution.

Fra Kapp A Cabo At the end of our stay in Singapore, we decided to take the opportunity to do what we had wanted to do already for a long time. A long-distance bicycling journey through Europe. From the North Cape in Norway to Gibraltar in the south of Spain. It led us through Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain and Portugal. Under the name "Fra Kapp A Cabo", we needed four months to complete this 7200 km journey. It probably was what is called our "once in a life-time" experience. At moments very tough, at others very beautiful. By taking along a small computer and digital camera, I was able to build an on-line trip-report. The final version is available on this site.

Gintic After 10 years Philips, I made a move to Singapore to work for Gintic, an Institute in Manufacturing Technology. In those four years I built-up and managed a group specialized in manufacturing and third party logistics to support the Singapore industry by doing automation projects. Besides managing this group I did a wide spectrum of projects: functional requirements and system design of a Shop Floor Control system operational improvement plan for a 3rd party warehousing company IT consultant for cargo handling at Changi Airport (Singapore Airlines) development of a navigation system for autonomous unmanned vehicles, including a message passing software bus and GPS based positioning Internet based user-interface for a material storage system Besides that, I was chairman editor of our company magazine "Cutting Edge" and I lectured part-time at the Nanyang Technological University on Shop Floor Control and Industrial Data Communication.

Philips TASS Within Philips I worked the last 4-5 years at an internal software house in embedded, technical and industrial automation. In that period I was project leader of two major but very different projects For the 5km long CTE tunnel in Singapore, we designed and implemented a fully automated monitoring and control system. The system was based on Stratus' computers for the RT database, Sun's for the GUI and VME/PLC systems for local control. Software-wise the whole system was based on the FAST/Tools SCADA system. After that back to Industrial Automation. To implement a Promis based Shop Floor Control system for the first Flat Panel Display factory in Europe. Within a year the factory was designed and installed and from day one, the VAX based SFC system was tracking the batches. This was followed by linking the system with 80 robots, using Secs I&II messages and CellWorks as a front-end system. During my period at TASS I got my APICS certification and again extended my scope with International Management and a course in "Marketing for non-marketeers".

Philips CFT In 1985 I joined Philips' Centre for Manufacturing Technology in Eindhoven to be able to make the step from administrative to technical automation. Being part of the Industrial Data Processing group of the CFT's CAM centre, I worked in various functions on Shop Floor level Industrial Automation projects. information analysis and functional design of Statistical Process Control system for Philips IC-factory chairman of an international working-group on Preventive Maintenance and Repair CAM-consultant specialized in databases, data-communication and software engineering design and implementation of a videotex network and database design of an overall factory-automation architecture for the 14 plants of the business unit Display Systems feasibility-audit of project for a traffic control system for the Dutch government My skills were enhanced both in technical and managerial sense. Training in software engineering and information analysis were rotated with project management and business administration.

Volmac After a Masters in Architecture at the Delft University of Technology, I started my career at Volmac, Holland's largest software house. There I was trained as a programmer and systems analyst: in-house training in Computer Science databases and 4GL languages software engineering and design My first assignment was for the Rabo-bank, where I programmed on a large IBM MVS system in PL/1. Later on I was assigned to IBM, to do a field-test of the (then new) QMF 4GL in combination with the SQL/DS database.

  Willem van Schaik, Holland, September 1999     http://www.schaik.com/wwwillem.html