Mission for the fire department: a crane operator has to be rescued from his cab at a height of 55 meters. A case for the height rescuers. Using their climbing equipment, they begin the ascent to rescue the man. Not only does every move have to be right, the equipment also has to be reliable, every harness and every carabiner has to hold. To ensure that this is the case, the personal fall protection equipment of the height rescuers is regularly checked by experts - as is, for example, every single piece of equipment that the fire department carries with them on a mission. "This examination used to go like this: The examiner looks at each part and makes a note of its condition. For example, in an Excel spreadsheet," says Tim Schmitz. "This is not only incredibly tedious, but of course also difficult in terms of traceability." When he heard about this problem with the fire department from an acquaintance, he approached his fellow student Marius Janssen. Both are studying computer science at The Hochschule Niederrhein, and both know each other from the MakerSpace. "The chemistry was right and we quickly came up with a good solution to the problem."

The two developed software in which the individual parts of the protective equipment can be quickly stored. The examiner then clicks through and gives their assessment. "Based on this, we looked at the testing of protective equipment in general. The fact is that in many areas, items need to be regularly checked and cataloged to ensure they are still fit for purpose. And most companies don't have any software for this yet, some actually work with spreadsheets."

Solving problems, simplifying processes and thus improving the work of other people - these are the goals of Marius Janssen and Tim Schmitz when developing software. "We ask ourselves, what exactly do people need? And to do this, we look at work processes and talk to examiners, for example, to find out exactly which step our software can help with." In future, the two founders want to develop their company Laminar Solutions in such a way that they basically develop digital tools for experts to simplify their work. "To do this, we look at existing processes that are either not yet digital at all or that are digitally unclean and work with the customer to develop the software solution they need," says Marius Janssen. "Particularly in the area of examiners, a company can manage a lot more orders if the employees can concentrate fully on their important job - namely examining - instead of laboriously entering data into a spreadsheet."

Tim Schmitz (34) and Marius Janssen (26) founded their company while they were still studying for their Bachelor's degree and are currently finishing their Bachelor's theses. They sought help with all questions relating to self-employment from HNX, the team for business start-ups at the university: "We really attended a lot of workshops there, for example on the subject of taxes or trademark registration, and received a lot of input for all our questions," says Tim Schmitz. "For example, when it came to drawing up a partnership agreement. These are all things that we had simply never dealt with before."

In general, both have noticed a greater openness to the topic of self-employment at the university. "However, I also have to say that I probably wouldn't have taken the step on my own," says Marius Janssen. "But today I can't imagine it any other way."