Up next in our user spotlight series we have the Product Manager of Automation Studio/Runtime: Michael Werner!
What is your role?
I am the Product Manager for Automation Studio, located at the company headquarters in Eggelsberg. I am a part of the PG Software. Together with my colleagues, we define the product strategy and roadmap for our engineering tool. I stay in close contact with our customers and their needs, while on the other hand working in close collaboration with the PO (Product Owner) for planning of priorities and roadmaps.
What is your area of expertise?
After my studies in electrical engineering with a focus on automation, I worked several years as an application engineer in B&R while steadily taking over more project management tasks. Doing a lot of local customer support, trainings and customer presentations for our products always kept me close to the market and their demands and needs.
I took a break from B&R for 3 years and also got to see the challenges of running a 24/7 production with all the required software tools including building up a brand new plant.
Still, with everything I did and do, it’s always most important to me that our customer in the end is happy with the provided solution, while always trying to understand the actual use case to be solved rather than the specific issue.
What excites/motivates you about the B&R Community?
In my opinion, the greatest strength of B&R was always it’s highly skilled people. Having a possibility to connect to each other and share expertise is something extremely valuable and beneficial. I do remember seeing mails asking around whether someone has already solved a particular challenge in previous times, and I really love to see that there is now a proper platform to discuss such kinds of things. Especially the fact that the platform is open to everyone to read and search makes it all the more valuable in my opinion, since challenges do not only occur inside the B&R application engineers, but also at our customers.
In my role, I am really excited to have a very close insight into currently pressing topics to be able to cross check it with our plannings and also into getting some additional insight into where and how our products are used.
What are your personal passions/hobbies?
During summer I like to spend time outside, preferably either cycling or swimming. I also enjoy spending time with friends, be it for concerts, going out or just a nice dinner or hanging out at home.
For holidays, I really like traveling. I rarely visit the same place twice and always like to see new places and expand my horizon. The only exception to visit places more often are music festivals.
Have a question for Michael? Feel free to ask it below!
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