Stage Product-Market intelligence Assessment

Uncovering Market Insights: Elevate Our Construction Products to New Heights

What's your job?

TSN Building Systems businesses produce “sandwich panels” for the construction industry at its three entities: Netherlands (SAB Geldermalsen), Germany (Fischer Profil), and Switzerland (Montana Bausysteme). A sandwich panel is a prefabricated construction element consisting of 2 metal outer skins and a core of rigid foam, providing the requested insulation to the building (thermal, acoustic, air- and water-tightness). PIR foam has been developed as a high-performance insulation material (superior thermal resistance and high dimensional stability). In a highly competitive construction sector, customer satisfaction & market share are currently severely hindered due to performance gaps of current products compared to competitors, e.g. lack of certification on certain products for Fire Testing, leading to loss of business.

To understand the relative position of our products in the market, compared to key competitors, we need to generate intelligence and insights into what our competitors are offering, both in terms of product (e.g. panel dimensions, colors, materials), as well as claimed performance and certifications (e.g. thermal conductivity, resistance to smoke and fire, sustainability credentials). Only by having a clear view of what is currently available (or at least claimed) in the market, can we really understand what potential gaps we have and where to focus our time, money and effort on improvements.

Main activities are:

• Familiarisation with our various businesses, processes, and products, develop detailed overview of our production lines and their product offering & current performance characteristics
• Review of previous work done in this area, now outdated and requiring new insights & information
• Familiarisation with key competition and develop a detailed overview of production lines, product offering, claimed performance characteristics
• Develop a model / framework for a comparison between TSN Building Systems and competition
• Populate model / framework with data and perform gap analysis to show differences between TSN and competition
• Develop a set of recommendations for closing identified gaps
• Present findings to key stakeholders within the businesses

This will be achieved by:

• Personal contacts with key product and market experts across our 3 businesses (Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland).
• Review of previously available literature
• Discussions with Sales, Marketing, Technical Support staff to gather information
• Detailed internet research & analysis of competitor websites
• Use of AI tools such as ChatGPT where relevant and applicable

Is this you?

The project has both a technical and market nature, and is suited to students (HBO/WO) of all Technical and/or Business/Marketing disciplines. You should be:

• Organised and structured in your approach to data & information gathering and storage
• Comfortable in dealing with large amounts of diverse information
• Able to structure data & information in a logical way, easily understandable by others
• Able to summarise and report key facts and findings into clear observations and recommendations
• Open for discussion and exchange with different people at different levels in the organisation
• Comfortable with communication (written and spoken) in English. German would be a benefit.

What do we offer?

We offer you a paid internship with proper guidance. In consultation with you, we start with drawing up your assignment to make sure that it fits the requirements of your university. You can gain valuable experience within a large organization and Dutch only manufacturing industry. You can count on a no-nonsense and result-oriented organization, within which you can make a concrete contribution to the realisation of improvement objectives.

During your training period you can regularly participate in events such as student tours and lunch lectures. We also offer the possibility to make use of our Library Services. When you are in your final Master of Bachelor internship, you can temporarily become part of our internal Association for Interns ‘’In(terns) for Steel and for young professionals "The Magnet".

What is your department?

During the project you will be part of the central team within Building Systems for Innovations, Development, and Sustainability. This is a team of 7 people currently, based across various locations. Your base will be the IJmuiden site (office based), with occasional visits to the SAB Profiel facilities in IJsselstein and Geldermalsen, where you will have the opportunity to visit the production lines and see our process in action.

Our ambition

Our ambition is to become a green, clean, and circular steel company that everyone is proud of. We aim to improve how people around the world work, live and move through sustainable steel. To succeed, we need talents like you. Will you join us in shaping the future?