Questions that come up before the contract does.

Why hire from a smaller company at all?

• It's cheaper.
• If a person hired from a big company falls ill, do you really believe a perfect substitute shows up within days? A smaller company can — and will — perform at least as well, because the account matters more to it.
• People at a smaller company do more versatile work and understand what actually drives a business.
• There's no difference in the level of experience of the engineers.

You've already put a lot of money and effort into your product. Dolphin Engineering is always willing to sign a proper Non-Disclosure Agreement to make sure competitors can't reach or use your assets — even for smaller projects.

If you don't have one ready, Dolphin Engineering will provide one and make sure it fits the project.

Dolphin Engineering can operate under the Terms and Conditions laid out by IT-United / PZO. Bigger companies will often want their own instead, which is fine.

Smaller companies tend to benefit from the firm basis already laid out in these terms, since the biggest issues are properly addressed within them. Either way, Dolphin Engineering is always willing to adapt the contract for a long-lasting business relationship.

Nobody gets to be Leonardo Da Vinci anymore — there's just too much information out there. So a professional might land as a near-fit rather than a perfect fit.

When that happens, Dolphin Engineering helps close the gap as fast as possible, drawing up a plan together with the customer and the professional — costs included.

A VAR (Verklaring ArbeidsRelatie) was a document issued by the Belastingdienst confirming that a professional is judged to be genuinely self-employed, so the hiring company would not be asked to cover standard employee insurances.

Yes — Dolphin Engineering held a valid VAR.

Note: the VAR was replaced by the wet DBA / model agreements in the Netherlands in 2016 — worth double-checking the current arrangement directly with Dolphin Engineering.

• Control Architecture Reference Model (CARM) and Sensing Machine Software / YieldStar calibration functionality, for the world's leading supplier of complex lithography systems to the semiconductor industry.
• Calibration automation for heavy-duty torque wrenches (up to 100,000 Nm) and hydraulic pumps (up to 700 bar).
• An HDMI driver for a DVD videorecorder from a well-known Dutch electronics brand.
• 24/7 production control across a few hundred factories worldwide.
• DALI software for large building lighting installations.
• Factory testing across several DVD recorder product ranges.
• ZigBee control software for LED lamps, for a well-known Dutch lighting company.
• PIC-controller LED panels for production facilities.
• Cable modem control software.

• ASML — motion control, machine calibration software and performance analysis
• Hytorc — system development for calibration of heavy-duty torque wrenches and hydraulic pumps
• Prodrive — motion control
• Philips — lighting, laser sensors, DVD recorders, HDMI, USB, feasibility studies for digital systems
• Marel — Stork Poultry Processing — OS9000 to real-time embedded Linux transition
• Marel — Townsend Further Processing — Modbus TCP
• Stork — OS9 to OS9000 transition and several control modules
• The Industree / BarcoNet — cable modem software
• Eware — Modbus TCP on an Olimex microcontroller

A complete list of customers and projects is on Teun Scheffel's LinkedIn profile.

Dolphin Engineering is also eager to help out closer to home (non-exhaustive):

• Sponsored elementary school Op 't Hof with safety glasses for kids around fireworks.
• Taught kids (groups 6, 7 and 8) about chip manufacturing and tech, with demo material provided by ASML.