COVID-19: How Engineering Schools are Supporting Micro-Enterprises and SMEs

As quarantine draws to a close, the major engineering schools are already prepared to help with reopening: the community of Arts and Métiers students has designed a program to help micro-enterprises and SMEs navigate the health protective measures required for restarting their businesses.

 Arts et Métiers and the Société des Ingénieurs Arts et Métiers (the school's alumni association) have created GARAS, a help guide for reopening businesses safely, to assist all company employees with implementing protective health measures.

A practical guide and in-person assistance

The GARAS project takes a two-pronged approach to achieving its goal. Initially, it provides a best practices guide that contains information on the protective health measures required to reopen (adjustment of work stations and hours, organization and logistics).  But it's also a real offer of assistance, because GARAS gives companies the opportunity to "host an Arts et Métiers engineering student to help implement the various measures as part of a special internship adapted for this purpose that will count towards his/her academic requirements." The school further explains that "1,500 first-year engineering students are available for this type of assistant engineer internship."

Complementary projects

According to the program's sponsors, GARAS is only the first link in a chain of mutual assistance. The Arts et Métiers community also wants to make other initiatives available "to help restart French industry" such as the Tech to PME program to help SMEs master new technology, and the Rexam network that mainly provides businesses with individualized, professional support in the domains of industrialization, organization and logistics.

Showing solidarity

The school of engineering points out that, during the pandemic, the Arts et Métiers community has also been showing its solidarity with healthcare professionals by designing and manufacturing protective visors. In other words, "the production capacity of the Arts and Métiers campus, combined with the mobilization of students with home 3D printers" has made it possible to produce "over 6,000 visors per week which are given directly to establishments near campus."

To find out more about this initiative:

https://artsetmetiers.fr/fr/soutien-aux-entreprises