Alexander Dreher joined the Feature Team at RE: in January 2023 as a Senior Software Engineer (Fullstack). Learn more abut Alex, who is already a great addition to the team.

Welcome, Alex! Good to have you with us. Please tell us, what did you do before you joined our team?

I was self-employed on the side in IT services since school, worked in the IT department during my basic military service and after studying computational visualistics in Koblenz, I worked for 12 years in a digital agency in Bonn. Advertising projects, high-scale web applications for end customers, as well as intranet projects were the focus here. I was mainly working as a software developer, but I also had a lot of management tasks, e.g. building up a second subsidiary, selecting and mentoring staff. Technology was and is always a priority for me. I have been playing with hardware and source code for as long as I can remember, took apart QBasic programs on an Intel 386, was developing and operating noteworthy productive applications with over a thousand users since 2000 and work with Ruby on Rails since 2007.

Why did you choose RE:?

Digital agencies are very fast-moving due to many different projects. It is good for the learning process, but I missed the proximity to a specific industry. The RE: is the next step for me to take. A step into product development with not only proximity to a specific industry (plastics extrusion), but also application of machinery knowledge coupled with IT. The employees I have met have convinced me right from the start – Welcoming faces with respective expertise. It is super exciting to build applications that help to evaluate and optimize production processes and ultimately to save resources and reduce waste. The idea of applications that will support to control an entire machinery is something amazing to me.

In your opinion, what are the challenges for the plastics extrusion industry?

Of course, there are challenges in Industry 4.0, which we have been talking about since 3.0 in the 1970s. The user interfaces and connectivity between machines and machine parts have a lot of catching up to do. Although we are talking about a very stable industry in which extrusion lines can produce and work for 30 years and more, in my opinion the full potential has not been exploited yet. The chance to actively boost the digitization of an industry is very cool! It starts with simple stuff, like replacing pen and paper next to a machine with comprehensive data that can be visualized, stored and analyzed. The fascinating thing is that producers can thus benchmark their productions and replicate even complex machine setup sequences.

How do you tackle your new challenges?

First of all, it is important for me to familiarize myself with the extrusion industry with the help of our great team consisting not only of excellent software engineers, but also a lot of individuals with for example mechanical engineering experience. It is important for me to fully understand the needs and challenges of the packaging industry and our customers in order to identify and exploit opportunities for optimization.

Fortunately, I have a quick perception and am therefore confident that I can learn and contribute quickly. In addition, I hope that my years of experience as a software developer will provide new perspectives and stimuli for the team. Anyway, I am looking forward helping to further develop the solutions of RE:.

Please tell us a little bit more about you personally!

I'm 36 years old, living in the "Westerwald". My free time is very family-oriented. In our house, where I live together with my wife and two young daughters, being janitor and craftsman also takes a big role. In the little remaining time, I work on home automation since I have always been interested in technology and optimizing "things".

Thank you for your time, Alex. We are happy to have you on board!

Thank you very much!

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