Jan Julius Stein is Director of Testing and Customer Support at Thomas. An avid hobbyist with his own workshop, he enjoys tinkering with cars and motorcycles after work. At Thomas, he leads the testing and customer support team, which thoroughly tests products during development and in the field and assists customers with implementing Thomas products into their systems.
“At the end of the day, by testing and validating our products for series production, we ensure that the service life and performance of the component meet expectations,” he explains. However, not all tests are the same. “The test bench can be a table setup, i.e., just a small setup with sensors on the workbench. But it can also be a room-filling hydraulic test bench that operates at pressures of up to 350 bar. It always depends on the product.”
Close cooperation with customers is important here. Thomas puts the customer at the center of the development process, because the earlier their requirements are incorporated into the development process, the better. Internal cooperation is also essential, according to Jan Julius: “We are a gear in the machinery—and I always have to check how well it harmonizes with the other gears, i.e., the departments we work with.”
This strategic leadership suits him well. He wants to work with people and technology. After completing his vocational training as a wholesale and foreign trade merchant, he quickly realized that the technical component was missing. So he continued his education at evening school to become a state-certified technician, joined a wind power company, and then came to Thomas.
He has now been working in Herdorf for more than twelve years. „I really enjoy working with people, which is why I am very grateful to be in a management position. But I’m just as interested in technology – and this position allows me to combine the two very well.“
If you want to know what the new “proving ground” and excavator on the company premises are all about and how development at Thomas is set to continue, you can hear all this and more in this exciting episode of Snackbox!
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