Niklas, what does an advanced engineering specialist at Vorwerk do?
I look at how people live and shape their day-to-day lives. At first, that doesn’t sound like a typical job for an engineer. However, it’s only possible to develop useful technical products if you understand how they can help people and/or offer added value. As advanced engineering specialists, we supply the initial ideas for a product and develop them together with colleagues from other departments until we later bring them to market as series projects. In this respect, advanced engineering is the very first step of a process through which we develop products.
That sounds like a creative task. How much conceptual work does your job involve?
A lot. At the beginning, we try to develop an idea and promote it within the company in order to realize it. Once that has happened, we quickly transition to the conceptual work. Because we are a technical advanced engineering department, it is also up to us to create the technical basis for the products. Once it is clear, for example, that customers no longer want to do the vacuuming by hand, and we develop a robot vacuum cleaner, this gives rise to many technical questions such as the form of propulsion or the brush geometry.
To find a corresponding solution, we frequently create initial prototypes and different variations of a product idea. To this end, we may quickly consult other departments so that we do not lose sight of other important aspects and the big picture. Most recently, for example, we immediately worked together with the design department on a new concept.