Oliver Zwirner

Study programme: Industrial Engineering (Diploma) (opens in a new window)

Employer: Inworks GmbH

Position: executive board

Contact: LinkedIn-profile (opens in a new window), XING-profile (opens in a new window)


Straightforward or via detours: What was your school career like and what interests did you have as a younger person?
Detours, of course. I first started studying civil engineering and then physics, only to realise after a few semesters that I was completely generalist in nature and couldn't do much with specialist knowledge in great depth and breadth. It was by chance that I found out about the cooperative degree programme in industrial engineering at the universities of Ulm and Neu-Ulm. It immediately appealed to me. Another advantage for me was that, as a young person, I didn't have to decide at an early stage what exactly I wanted to do after graduation due to the generalist nature of the programme.


What experiences during your studies have had a particular impact on you?
The most formative experience was definitely my diploma thesis (yes, I'm that old :-)). It consisted partly of the business plan from which Inworks ultimately emerged.


What was your first job like and how did you hear about it?
I started as an intern at a Steinbeis Foundation transfer centre in my second practical semester and then worked there until the end of my degree, before taking on project responsibility for setting up management systems (mainly QM). I learnt an incredible amount in the process. After graduating, I went straight into self-employment with three other partners and founded Inworks GmbH.


Please describe your day-to-day work. Which projects do you work on and which tasks do you particularly enjoy?
My day-to-day work is quite varied. In a medium-sized company like Inworks, which currently has 60 employees, there is not a separate position for every function. In addition to general management, my responsibilities also include HR and marketing management. The most important task is certainly "taking care" so that everything runs as smoothly as possible. Incidentally, I share the operational management with Markus Tannheimer, with whom I studied at HNU. This has the wonderful advantage that we can sometimes push each other back and forth with tasks that we are not so fond of.


How would you complete the beginning of the following sentence?
HNU... "I associate it with nice people and good memories."