This opportunity was made possible by an offer of continuing development made to him by his former personnel manager. Following a discussion, Schönauer made a decision to continue his career development in the direction of an operations expert. He successfully completed his training within two years. Even before this point, Schönauer was presented with an opportunity to switch from the factory to the office. His fascination for large machines, however, has stayed with him: “Generally, one doesn’t see machines of this size very often”, notes the Niederglatt, Switzerland native. Even nowadays, he can still be found in the factory quite regularly: part of his job is to see the introduction of new machines through the planning stages, to safeguarding the infrastructure, to the test runs. His job has a great deal of variety. “I work with all different kinds of co-workers”, says the 40 year-old enthusiastically.

Even after ten years, his work at Buhler still hasn’t gotten boring. “I can work in a great team setting, and no one here is just another number”. Part of good teamwork also means that the process specialist can replace himself for two months out of the year, to give him a chance to compete in international paragliding competitions. After all, work isn’t the only place he aims high.