Interview: Greg Tischler

How did you end up here?
I answered an ad in the newspaper, a real paper-paper, The Cincinnati Enquirer. I got an interview because our VP of Sales, a Louisiana native, was doing the hiring. He read my resume and saw I went to LSU so he brought me in to talk. He ended up hiring me to be an applications engineer, and today my title is product manager.

What does a product manager do?
I spend a lot of my time answering questions about technical specifications and translating them into benefits for our customers. I explain why a certain feature would make a customer want to buy our product instead of a competitor’s product. I’m also involved in long-term development of radar level measurement solutions. That’s the most difficult part of my job; anticipating market needs and working to implement them into our sensors.

What radar sensors have hit the market as one of those long-term development projects?
The VEGAPULS 69 was in the works for a long time. Some of that time was waiting for 80 GHz technology to become better and more cost-effective for our customers. We could have had the VEGAPULS 69 in 2011 (instead of 2014) and we would have ended up with a device that operated at a different frequency but didn’t measure any better than a VEGAPULS 68. So we waited a long time for the conditions and the performance of the sensor to be right for the market.

Was the VEGAPULS 64 a long-term project?
No. The VEGAPULS 64 came about because the VEGAPULS 69 was so good. We knew we would have an 80 GHz radar for liquid level someday, but initially we didn’t plan to release it so quickly. But the VEGAPULS 69 received such a great reaction, we knew we had to get the VEGAPULS 64 in customers' hands as soon as possible.

How many 80 GHz-related training seminars have you led since the announcement of the VEGAPULS 64?
In the last 18 months, I’ve lead 35 trainings. I have had a lot of fun talking with customers about how they use our radar sensors.

What gets the end-users most excited about the VEGAPULS 64?
People react to all different things. Some people get really excited about the size because it’s easy to retrofit on a vessel. Showing pictures of test installations and the signals from those applications is effective. Customers who have experience and know how signals usually look see our results and say, “That is amazing.”

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