In 1998, I began to realize my career aim of becoming a mechanical engineer by enrolling at the technical and business college "Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft des Saarlandes (HTWdS)". After successfully completing the foundation course, I elected to major in production engineering and began to look for attractive companies for the upcoming practical phase of the course. I was already aware of the company that is now ThyssenKrupp Gerlach GmbH as a local, medium-sized company with a long-standing tradition through contact fairs and its good reputation among students.

However, it only became clear to me during the very interesting and varied six-month practical semester that the company is not only known outside the region but actually plays a leading role in the global market for complex forged parts. I was able to apply and deepen the knowledge of operational procedures I had acquired straight away during my subsequent dissertation. With cooperation having been so valuable and successful up to that point, I was keen to apply for a position at ThyssenKrupp Gerlach.

I took on my position as tool development project engineer in the design department at the end of 2002, and I have been working on the development of forming tools. With the help of simulation software, geometric tool optimizations can be implemented in the development phase, meaning that cost-intensive practical tests and tool changes are unnecessary.

In addition to rapid understanding of completely new challenges and their independent solution, sensitivity when dealing with colleagues and the development of foreign language skills, particularly for communicating with international partners, are challenges you had to rise in that time.

Following my appointment as team manager design as of January 1, 2006, my duties widened significantly. As well as having management responsibility for six colleagues, I have also been assigned a wide spectrum of other tasks in addition to my previous work. The most important of these are working together with production department on questions relating to tooling in series production and cooperating with the toolmaking shop, for example in optimizing internal processes.