Ronald Reichmuth's career and everyday working life
Ronald Reichmuth is a hardware and firmware developer at STEINEL Solutions. Thank you Ronald for answering a few questions for us. We want to start the interview right away to find out more about your career and your day-to-day work.
Education
When did you complete your studies?
«I completed my electrical engineering degree in Rapperswil in 2007.»
Why did you decide to do this apprenticeship back then?
«I was interested in electronics and computer technology from a very early age. During my apprenticeship as an electronics technician at Siemens, I was able to ‘taster’ various departments and support electronics engineers at work. I knew then that I wanted to do that later on. A degree opens the door to working on really exciting projects.»
What do you find exciting about this specialisation?
«Our world is becoming more and more connected, it is extremely exciting to understand the technologies and see their applications in everyday life.»
Everyday work
What makes working in development at STEINEL Solutions exciting for you?
«In OEM Engineering at STEINEL Solutions, we are always able to work on exciting customer projects and see how an idea becomes a product. Today we are working in an interdisciplinary team to develop a sprayer for applying cosmetic creams, next year we will be optimising the heating control of a coffee machine or integrating a motion sensor into a toilet flush plate (Editor's note: See reference TECE GmbH).»
What does your day-to-day work at STEINEL Solutions look like?
«Start notebook, get coffee, Scrum...»
Products
How many products that you have worked on in your career so far are on the market today?
«After graduating, I worked in a spin-off where, among other things, I helped develop high-speed cameras, which were later used as goal-line cameras at the World Cup. At Siemens, I worked for years on an entire platform from which many product variants emerged, and at STEINEL, several lights and sensors are already being used by customers. There must be over 20 products in total.»
What is the greatest product you have worked on to date? And why?
«The greatest product is definitely the SENSOTEC NET product family, which I worked on. It involved everything: housing, hardware and software development. The sensors are networked with Bluetooth Mesh, a relatively new standard that is also used in the IoT sector.»
Technologies and working methods
How has your work and the technology changed in recent years?
«I used to develop more hardware, but today the expertise is increasingly in the software or in the interaction between hardware and software.»
Have working methods changed since you graduated? Advantages / disadvantages of today's technology, e.g. Scrum?
«Development work is becoming increasingly complex, be it regulatory guidelines or requirements that are constantly changing. The teams are usually interdisciplinary and spread across various locations. Communication channels are shorter and development is becoming increasingly agile - all in all, a little more stressful.»
«In OEM Engineering at STEINEL Solutions, we work on exciting customer projects. Every day we see how an idea is turned into a product. Since our customers are active in a wide variety of industries and the products have the most diverse applications, no two days are the same.»