For a period of more than ten years a very successful Host Company Program has been running at the School of Engineering at Jönköping University (JTH), Sweden. This program enables close collaboration between the university and its staff and the 500 regional host companies (HCs) who support the quality assurance of the engineering education given at the School of Engineering.

With the introduction of the principles of CDIO at JTH, the host company program and the engineering methodology course was seen as a pre-existing building block of CDIO. This paper will explain in more detail how the HCP is orchestrated at JTH as well as how it is perceived by university staff, the engineering students, and the HCs. Also, how the HCP fits the principles of CDIO will be discussed further together with what is needed to be refined within the HCP.