Experience in the real-world, under factory conditions really matters – and drives continuous improvement programs to ensure our tools deliver. Andreas plays a key role in ensuring that we stay ahead of customer requirements and provide usability to match our accuracy.
Andreas Dahl has been with us ever since graduating from HiST with a degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering – clocking up more than 10 years in our team. While nominally Production and Service Manager for our Machine Tool business and hence responsible for Quality Assurance, Andreas takes on a wide range of activities, making him an invaluable colleague!
In fact, his work brings him into contact with all of our CU2 Tool and CU2 Track customers, making him instantly recognizable – and a key face in the organization. Andreas is a local lad, coming originally from Trondheim, but his experience now spans the globe.
That’s important, because he’s responsible for ensuring that all of our customers receive timely service – which means organizing a complex schedule to meet the needs of a community that’s spread across so many units and so many countries.
Keeping production flowing – and gaining insights from the field
As if that’s not challenging enough, Andreas also handles purchasing for our production, which means balancing inventory and sourcing components (at the best prices!) to meet demand and to ensure that we deliver on time.
“Because I have the opportunity to meet our customers after they have adopted our solutions, I gain a rich perspective into how they use them”, commented Andreas. “Not only does this give us a sense of their experience and the challenges they face in their own work, but it also allows me to collect ideas for evolving our solutions from the user perspective – not just from the perspective of how we enhance our technology. This leads to some very practical insights.”
All of this means that Andreas plays a key role in shaping how we deliver new innovations and product enhancements. This ensures that we tightly align our roadmap between innovations from the research side – and demands from the user side.
Capturing ideas to drive usability and performance
“It’s a really cool place to be in. On the one hand, I’m helping refine our optics and prototyping new solutions. On the other, I can see what happens in the real world. For example, we know that the CU2 Tool is used in extremely demanding conditions – so direct observations from the field that we have collected help us to make continuous improvement to the cleaning process”, he added.
And that’s key. Our CU2 Tools operate in the real world and so must deliver. They are often in use for many years – quality assurance matters throughout their lifecycle. The ability to perform over such a long period is critical to the businesses of our customer. The knowledge and insights obtained by Andreas help to ensure that we are aligned and can deliver CU2 Tools that are integral to often complex production processes and meet customer needs through time.
Sure, data and measured performance are vital – but at Conoptica, we never forget the human perspective. Understanding customer experience, based on face-to-face meetings and discussions means that, not only do our tools deliver accuracy, but they are also easy to use and built for the challenging environments in which our customers operate. We never stop learning so that you can secure the lasting return on your investments in our tools.
Andreas and his colleagues are vital for our success – and like to share their stories. Watch out for more from the team soon!